The Story within the Story… The abuse of authority has led us here

Jul 10, 2016 News

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By Leonard Gildarie

Over the past few weeks, I have been seeing and hearing growing complaints about the behaviour of our public officials in office. For years now, this has been festering problem that has been eating away at the rate of our development.

From the police force, to our public service, our attitude to the quality of work has seriously affected the morale of this country. For years, people thought it okay to pay a little raise to get something simple like a passport. You get stopped by a traffic rank for a simple thing like being a little over the speed limit and you had to dump your passengers from the minibus and be taken to the station, when this was an offence worth a mere ticket. The police ranks knew this, but it was all part of the shakedown process to soften the victims.

The older folks will recall a time when a visit to the GPO building for a birth certificate encountered long lines and lots of runnings. Yes, you got me right. You had to pay a bribe for a simple thing like a birth certificate.

There was a time when files for a court case disappeared because somebody knew somebody in the court.

I saw a letter last week by someone complaining about the ferry operations between Supenaam and Parika. The complainant says that a system where priorities would be granted to government officials and emergencies is being abused by workers there to slip in friends and others who would have given them a little raise.

The same situation, I have been told, is occurring at the Bartica ferry operations.

Now, the authorities would likely come out in defence and say that there is no evidence or that they are investigating. We never seem to hear of any resolutions. The status quo remains the same.

We just cannot continue to blatantly abuse the authority that has been vested in our hands. We have seen chairpersons of our state companies take it upon themselves to make decisions without consultations with the board. We have seen our officials use state resources, like vehicles and money, to conduct personal business on behalf of their party. Like hosting parties or paying for extravagant dinners.

How can this be? This is tantamount to fraud.

State resources are state resources. They are not your personal businesses that you can run how you want. The monies are not from your bank account. They belong to the people of Guyana. As officers, we are accountable. There should be repercussions for abuses. The ferries belong to the people of Guyana. The stellings belong to the people of Guyana.

What is absent here is the oversight by auditors and even the board members. We have to blame them and our engineers when things fail. They simply did not pay attention.

Surely, the account officers like the Permanent Secretaries are aware of the spending by board members. Surely the people at the stellings in Essequibo are aware of the complaints. Transport and Harbours Department will need to take serious action to give the people the service they deserve with our ferries.

Our Permanent Secretaries recently met with President David Granger and his team to talk about changes. In the past, each ministry with their Permanent Secretaries appeared to have operated autonomously, without much interaction with each other.

The administration, according to statements they have issued, wants all that changed. These officials have to meet and talk more with each other to ensure there is focus on the overall development of the country. I think it is a good move. The left hand must know what the right one is doing. The tail must not wag the dog.

Our chairpersons at the state boards are not executive ones. They are not given a salary but a stipend. They are supposed to be involved in policy decisions. Not in everyday running of the operations. You cannot use resources of the entity, like GGMC or GFC to fund a make-over of your office. You cannot take resources from the Guyana Revenue Authority and hire staffers and have them elsewhere. You don’t have that authority.

We keep going down the wrong road.

There were early general elections last year where the people of Guyana decided to change a government that had been there for two decades. The people voted for a change. The change they asked for is for our officials in office to be more accountable – for them to take care when it comes to spending and managing our valuable resources. We wanted less corruption. We wanted a change in the attitude in the way we do business. In the last few months, we seemed to have allowed the ‘same ole, same ole’ attitude to creep in.

In this day and age where technology rules how we live, our representatives must take care and know that they are being watched and judged, and people are talking.

Whatsapp and emails and the widespread social media are tools that people use to vent their frustrations.

A forum in Suriname and India and New York easily becomes news here with the click of a button and smartphones.

I saw someone post a photo recently on Facebook of a visit by Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo to New York. There were US Secret Service agents at what seemed to be a private function he attended. It was an innocent function, in my view. However, the lesson here is that we are all being watched.

Similarly, when our water is off; the electricity goes off and even the internet goes off, our corporations and telecoms companies must tell us why.

It is part of our responsibility of being accountable…answerable to our customers and our shareholders…the people of Guyana.

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