SPRINTING INTO THE FUTURE

Apr 07, 2013 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

A few weeks ago one of the most important developments in local aviation history took place. A LIAT aircraft landed at the Ogle Airport. This was an event of historic proportions, one that has been long in the making – and by today’s standards, too long.
The expansion of the Ogle facility from one that catered only for local flights, using mainly small planes, to one that today has almost daily flights to Suriname and weekly flights to Brazil, and is now allowing for flights from Caribbean islands, is a major development in the country’s transportation sector.
The private sector has been involved in the development of the Ogle Airport and they can be proud also of what has been achieved. One, however, has to understand that in today’s world, development has to be compressed into shorter time frames. It took far too long for the Ogle aerodrome to be developed to accommodate the size of planes that it is now accommodating. Its expansion should have been compressed into a two-year period.
In the courts of Guyana, as was observed by an opposition parliamentarian, judges and magistrates still have to write their notes. Yet, Guyana has been talking for close to twenty years about relieving judges and magistrates of this burden, as is done in other jurisdictions. By now this goal should have been achieved. It has not.
By the time, Guyana is ready to train stenographers to take notes in our court rooms, other countries would be migrating to voice-recording devices that would make these stenographers redundant.
Like in the aviation sector, there has been visible progress within the judiciary. That cannot be denied. The improvements are there to be seen: renovated court rooms, the building and expansion of new courts, the hiring of new magistrates and a family court.
There is a proposal to increase the number of judges. A new location is being identified for the land registry. There is talk about a commercial registry. Downstairs of the High Court, there is an improvement in both capacity and computerisation. There is also air conditioning where previously there wasn’t. Things have improved, but yet there are many areas where changes were anticipated and these changes are taking much too long.
Guyana needs to get moving quicker. Why does it have to take close to one month from the time of the reading of a Budget to its passage? This space needs to be shortened. Two weeks is enough time to get this process out of the way.
In fact, governments should aim for a Budget in the first week of January. Guyana is going to become more uncompetitive unless it begins to compress the time it takes for things to get done.To improve the pace at which things are done in Guyana requires a revamping of the public service. The sort of public service we have is not suited to fast action. Bureaucracy is by definition a slothful institution. There is a need for greater flexibilities to be granted to public administrators so that things can move faster.
This is not a call to bend the rules. It is a demand to change the rules to make them more bendable.
Guyanese should take note of what is taking place with the proposed Marriott Hotel. Never before in the history of Guyana has any building been moving as fast at the construction there.
It took the authorities one week to build a koker door. That was the same time it took the workers building that hotel to go up an additional storey.
The time it takes to construct some bridges along some of our main roadways is way too long. The Hope Canal Project needs to be accelerated. Guyanese cannot wait eight years for a bridge across the Demerara River. That time needs to be shortened to two years. Unless this happens we will always be left behind. Our parliamentarians have to understand this. We should be increasing rather than cutting expenditure, but on the condition that things move thrice as fast without compromising on standards.
Time and tide are not waiting for us to catch up. Guyana has to sprint towards development.

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