DUPED INTO BELIEVING A CRUEL MYTH

Mar 09, 2016 Editorial, Features / Columnists

Why is Guyana unable to adequately fund health, national security, education, and other crucial social services after nearly 50 years of Independence?
It is not that the country does not have the resources and intellect to improve its infrastructure as the former administration would want the people to believe. The reality is during the last fifteen years, corruption was expansive, as billions of tax dollars and borrowed funds were misappropriated by members of the former government whose only concerns were for them, relatives and friends to become wealthy by their brazen raping of the treasury.
During that time, corruption has affected almost every government department and state agency particularly NICIL, Housing and the GRA. Recent reports show that the Guyana Energy Agency was highly corrupt.
It is because of all this corruption that the education sector is failing our children; that the country’s roads are filled with potholes; that agriculture, health care and public security have been affected, and in some cases have stymied the economy and destroyed the lives of many.
As the former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan stated, “Corruption, is worse than prostitution; +prostitution may affect the morals of an individual, but corruption undermines democracy, it undermines peace and security.”
A world-renowned scholar has poignantly observed that if the government were to just remove 15 percent of the waste, mismanagement and corrupt use of public resources, Guyana could have adequately funded national security, health care, education and other social services. The previous administration did not, because of greed and selfishness, therefore, this government has to start the process by removing those who have a vested interest in maintaining the current debilitating system of corruption, and implement a new system that would deter those who are likely to become involved in corrupt practices.
Under the former administration, poor and inhumane conditions in several of the nation’s public hospitals and outreach clinics were tantamount to a train at full speed heading for a giant precipice. The public schools were in such poor state that a large number of the high school graduates have failed to gain sufficient qualifications to enter post-secondary academic institutions, which compromised their ability to obtain sustainable employment and to advance their careers.
Crime was so rampant that most senior citizens were forced to stay in their homes behind iron bar doors and windows. In fact, there is hardly a house in the city without steel bars at its windows and doors and this is the trend in several rural communities.
The current government, with the help of the people, has to do better to correct the wrongs of the previous administration. While too many sit idly by, others are stunted by government inaction which could lead to the past becoming the present and rapidly replicating into the future. Impotent rage will not help.
Guyana needs a proper governance and management style. Some in the government who are vehemently against the removal of former political appointees, will continue to preside over the corrupt practices and the wanton waste of public funds; a practice that makes it near impossible for the government to develop the economy, create jobs, and provide “a better life for all”.
The philosophical belief that an inflated ego is conscious of nothing but its own existence holds true, especially with most politicians, some of whom are incapable of learning from the past. They are unable to grasp contemporary events, and are incompetent of making the right decisions about the future of the country. They have inevitably doomed Guyana to such calamities that have struck it lifeless, and although the resources exist to bring it back to life, it would essentially take a genius to make it happen.
Under previous administrations, Guyana has degenerated into a crony capitalist state and the tragedy is that, hundreds of thousands have been duped into believing a cruel myth that the country was on the right track to development when it was not. They did not realize that some, as it were, must forever be “hewers of wood and carriers of water.”

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DUPED INTO BELIEVING A CRUEL MYTH

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