Guyana and its corruption rating

Jan 28, 2016 Editorial, Features / Columnists

Corruption is something that can be found in every society. However, the societies that adopt measures to deal with this scourge are often those that emerge as societies to be emulated. During the tenure of the Jagdeo administration whenever charges of corruption were levelled against the administration President Bharrat Jagdeo would debunk these charges.
On many occasions he would say that these charges are merely anecdotal; that people simply talk, but do not provide the evidence. However, in the cases when the evidence was provided, the President merely brushed it aside and took no action. It was as if he condoned it.
In fact, now that there is a new government one is being confronted with cases too numerous to mention. Some of the cases are so shocking that one is left to wonder what would have been the case and the financial loss to the treasury. Millions of dollars in misdirected funds were uncovered in the first month of the new administration.
Then there were the cases of contractors being awarded contracts and doing shoddy works that collapsed a few months later. Investigations revealed that these contractors were required to pay Government officials a percentage or face a bleak future when it came to the award of future contracts.
There were those officials who flaunted the tax laws by refusing to pay their due and when they did, the amount was so minuscule that it made a mockery of the tax system. This became evident when one looked at what these people erected or flaunted in full public view.
And it was not only the government people. In fact, there was a time when people paid to get the most basic of public service. People are still aware of paying public servants for birth certificates, and other documents necessary for their business activities. Surely these could not be considered anecdotal. Things reached the stage where the Ministry of Home Affairs set up a web site that invited people to inform the authorities whenever they paid a bribe or were asked to pay one.
These things have come back to haunt Guyana. An international organization that is measuring corruption has this country as the second most corrupt country in the region, surpassed only by Haiti. The scale is graduated from zero to 1000 with the latter figure being the least corrupt. Guyana slipped further down the scale in 2015 when compared to 2014.
When the scale was first revealed President Jagdeo blamed the local group which he said provided the information to the international body. He said that they exaggerated the extent of corruption. He called the local members anti-national.
When the then British High Commissioner was asked to comment on the findings on the corruption scale he simply said that foreign investors would hesitate to come. More than that, he said that whether the findings were accurate or inaccurate, the thing to do would be to change the perception by stamping out the pockets of corruption.
So the situation is slightly worse. The people who drive the corruption are still in place. The reporters say that the drug trade is fuelling the corruption and that there are officials who reach out to the drug dealer to help him move his product—for a fee.
The gold smugglers, the people who engage in money laundering, and those who collect bribes for doing their job should now be identified and hounded out of the system. But then again, this is easier said than done. Salaries are low and people all want to live even better than they are.
Yet being the second most corrupt country in the region is nothing to scoff at. People travelling out of the country are subject to scrutiny. Many have been detained at airports for no other reason than they hail from Guyana. And of course, the fallout. People in the Diaspora would once more disown their country.

Discover more from Kaieteur News

Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.

Latest News