Anxious to leave

Mar 02, 2015 Editorial

It has been reported in the not too distant past that close to 80 per cent of the country’s skilled people migrate. This certainly paints a gloomy picture for the future. It means that we are getting considerably less for investments in human development; training people is a very costly exercise.
Indeed, for as long as we could remember we have been producing our own teachers, nurses, skilled artisans and the like. Such was our training regimen that all those who graduated were good enough to work in any part of the world.
There was a time when the cost of living was such that we were content to stay and serve. But there was always the lure of life overseas. That lure now has so many of us leaving that we cannot train people fast enough and even those we train are never good enough because their foundation was rather weak. Things had even reached the stage where we were forced to lower the entrance qualifications to our top learning institutions.
What makes it worse is that all those who leave seem to have very good reasons. People can now say that they left because of the crime. In the past they said that they were running from a dictatorship. Some even left because, as they said, they were the victims of discrimination.
What we do not hear a lot of is the migration of people because they are dissatisfied with the pay. This was the talk for most of the time as recruiters came from every part of the world to solicit skilled people from Guyana.
Our decision-makers are wise enough to realize that they cannot stop the outward flow of the skilled people. They also say that they cannot match the financial rewards offered elsewhere. But there must be something that we could do. It is a given that we do not have the money to recruit foreign skills to replace those that we have lost.
Many countries have been able to secure foreign funding to help them replace the lost skills and the people from those territories do not migrate in the numbers like we have been doing.
Foreign investment would also help reduce the brain drain, but there must be something that the government must do. It must allow the foreign investor to pay the kind of wages that the investor feels is real.
Until recently, the government often dictated to the investor the kind of money that he should pay to avoid a conflict within the society. What is considered a fair pay in most societies would be seen as super salaries in Guyana, given the low value of our currency.
But even before the investor comes a lot has to happen in Guyana. One of the things is political stability. By no stretch of imagination can we say that we have a stable political climate in Guyana.
Every time it seems as though something is going to happen to make the climate stable someone or some event serves to widen the rift between the parties. This does little or no good and certainly no reputable foreign investor is going to come. Without these foreign investors the economy is going to slide further downhill and our skilled persons would continue to leave at a high rate.
What is most worrying is that no one seems to be doing anything to effect a change in our condition. The situation is still that taxes account for the bulk of our revenue which means that the very people who are complaining about poor pay and who are anxious to leave, would be asked to contribute more of that small pay to the national coffers by way of taxation.
At the same time, the cost of the utilities is rising. The electricity company often signals higher rates, citing the rising cost of fuel, and the same applies to water and transportation.
Some say that we are witnessing the death of Guyana as we know it. Unless something drastic happens they may be right.

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