Corruption is now a way of life

May 18, 2014 Features / Columnists, My Column

---

None of us ever thinks about the manner in which we speak. We are born in Guyana; we grow up here and we all share a common accent but we never think about that.  It is the same with people born anywhere else; they all speak the same way.
Of course, there is a difference in Guyana. Because the ancestors of the population come from different parts of the world there is a difference in certain patterns of speech. We have a distinct accent when we speak the native language—Creolese.
This is because those things are learnt. Other things are also learnt and soon become part of the national psyche. Chatting with a colleague the other day I learnt about something that is taken for granted in some communities and we do have some remote communities.
Fathers sleep with their daughters and brothers with sisters because the nearest source of emotion is some distance away, sometimes days away. Similarly, we talk of depressed communities where the rate of crime is high. Criminal activities are learnt; people see someone launch a successful criminal attack and pretty soon they come to accept that criminal attacks are the norm and that they are indoctrinated. They have a way of life that has become ingrained.
This is so in every sphere of life and so we come to what happens in every institution.  In the hospitals we see lowly paid staff who know that some of those above them make money. They see how these people make money and they do the same.
We see nurses who had earlier dispensed pharmaceuticals to senior officials now taking the pharmaceuticals for themselves. Earlier this year, the hospital sent home a senior dispenser and suspended three other nurses. Why the police were never called in can only be assumed. The hospital wanted to avoid a scandal. Senior officials would have been exposed.
Policemen leave their posts and set up roadblocks where they fleece passengers. When they are busted they simply flee. Their senior officers demand that they hand over the money they collect and that money never goes anywhere else except into the pockets of the senior officers.
Then there are those who, up until recently, sold driver’s licences. At one time this was a very profitable racket. People knew who to approach and they did. They paid a fee and suddenly they had driver’s licence. This did not escape the notice of the lower ranks and pretty soon they got into the business.
The police would describe those caught as the rogue cops and they spread throughout the force. A police patrol made a drug bust. The patrol did not turn in the drugs, instead, they opted to play the runner for money and even more drugs. Some have been known to turn the drugs over to other pushers and would collect the money.
Reporters stumbled onto this and said nothing because they did not know who to trust. As fate would have it, senior police officers got wind of the operation so that today we are not sure that this still happens. What we do know is that drug dealers pay people at various ports to allow drugs to be smuggled.
None of the players see anything wrong because they have been conditioned to accept this as a way of life.
I have spoken to people and they say that the big ones in the government do the same thing but that they are never arrested. When the suggestion of two wrongs do not make a right is peddled, the person at the other end would simply say that people have got to eat.
Sometimes, one gets the feeling that if better wages are paid some of what we see on the streets would not happen. However, the government would say that paying the workers more is to inflate the wage bill and cause inflation. I am not so sure.
Things will get worse. Over the past weeks I saw the exchange rate for the United States dollar climbing. It will get higher and that means that the ordinary people would have to pay more for some of the things that they now take for granted. Fuel will go up so the cost of transportation would increase.
The Central Bank would from time to time release foreign currency on the local market to keep the rate down. This has not happened for some time. Is Guyana short of hard currency?
One businessman said that the price would go even higher unless Guyana passes the anti-money laundering Bill. If the rate rises then air travel would become even more expensive. People who have money would simply pay, but the ordinary person is going to weep. Those seeking their visas from the United States are going to have to pay even more. If there is rejection then the pain would be more.
And the cycle begins. People are going to see nothing wrong with doing illegal things to make money. They are going to say that they have to live. Remittances are already down and it is going to become even more difficult to have people send money.
The criminals have to live too, so they are going to attack anyone who to them has a dollar. At one time they targeted the rich, now they target anyone.
There is a solution; pay people better and ask senior officials to clamp down on corruption. But then again, people see corrupt government officials so my solution may not even work.

---

---