The telephone directory symbolizes the tragedy that is Guyana

Dec 16, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I have advanced countless arguments for pessimistic analyses on Guyana’s future. I have offered substantial evidence for pessimistic predictions. My columns are entering their 28th year of existence. I’ve looked at Guyana from both sides now; from up and down, from win and lose, from give and take, and still somehow it’s Guyana’s illusions I recall, I really don’t know Guyana at all (these words are borrowed from the famous Joni Mitchell hit song, “Both Sides Now” minus the name Guyana of course)
It is not that an analyst wants to be deterministic; it is the unchanging nature of this country that plays with your sanity. In the twenty-seven years gone by, I have confronted mountains of negatives in this land and they just would not go away. Perhaps they will never disappear, but will be around like a zombie that haunts a castle and eventually devours its occupants.
A long, long time ago in these columns, I commented on more than one occasion on the absolute incompetence that characterized the make-up of the telephone directory. In one of my commentaries, I pointed out that all the entries for the University of Guyana were left out. Surely that was a compelling reason to fire the hired firm that did the document for the GT&T (now renamed GTT). How could the compilers have missed such a huge institution of importance?
Last week I had an unsettling quarrel with GPL. They came to cut the electricity for nonpayment. I relied on the monthly bill to guide me. But the bill didn’t come for December, so GPL came to disconnect. I wanted to know who was at fault; was GPL late in sending bills to the central post office or was it the incompetence of the Post Office Corporation (at the time of writing, Dec 15, no November bill as yet). I picked up the current directory to call the post office. There is no listing for the post office under P or under G, meaning Guyana Post Office Corporation.
In the previous directory (the last one before the current one was published in 2011), on page 172, after the Guyana Pentecostal Fellowship, comes the Guyana Post Office Corporation with 92 numbers for all the public post offices throughout the ten Regions of Guyana. I did a random check on ten of them from different Regions to see if those numbers are still operational; they are. The telephone directory is not a compilation of GTT; it out-sources that assignment.
But over the three decades that GTT has been here, it has stuck with the same firm, even though that company has made vital omissions in every directory it produced for GTT. I repeat for emphasis – despite graphic mistakes in every issue, GTT uses the same compilers.
I want to reiterate what previous columns have observed on this matter – the telephone directory since GTT came to Guyana has had glaring mistakes in every issue. The Manager for Customers’ Service at GPL, Lanceford Cummings told me his listed direct line is a mystery to him; he doesn’t know how, why and where GTT got that number as his direct line.
I am not a computer expert, but I understand what the process “database” means. If Kaieteur News is putting out a yearly booklet of its past and present employees, then the 2016 publication will include the database for 2015 plus the new staffers that came in 2016 and the same exercise goes on for the following years to come.
How did the database for 2011 which contains 92 phone numbers for the Post Office Corporation and its branches throughout Guyana get lost? In my layman’s knowledge of computers, I would say the person(s) compiling is (are) hopelessly incompetent.
The sadness of this country is that a parent with a five-year-old kid would have read my criticism of the omissions in the directory fifteen years ago. That five-year-old would now be twenty years and, in 2015, reading about a certain negative aspect of life in Guyana that I highlighted fifteen years ago. An analyst is compelled to ask – what is there to celebrate on the 50th year of Independence?
I went to Dale Andrews of this paper and voiced my fear of having to join that line to renew my driver’s licence. Then yesterday in the kitchen, my wife reminded me that our passports have expired. I am not joining that line too. Ten years from now, I will voice the same fear. What changes in my country? Will there be any happiness for the people of my country?

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The telephone directory symbolizes the tragedy that is Guyana

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