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President Granger, please pay Mark John!

Sep 19, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I walked over from the Magistrate Court to the eastern side of King Street where between, Charlotte and Croal Streets there is a string of stationery stores. I wanted to photocopy a letter I had written to the Commissioner of Police.
I just picked one of the stores at random.  This guy did the job, handed me my change then said to me; “Mr. Kissoon, if the Government could pay BK, why they cannot pay me?”
Obviously he had to explain to me. He did and he asked me to write about it. His father was with him, and I turned to both of them and said; “Do you want to go public with this?” The answer was yes. He gave me his name, Mark John. His store is Tashem’s Enterprise; address – 185 King Street. What is this man’s story?  During CARIFESTA, he supplied $1.9 million in goods and has not received one cent in payment.
I immediately asked if the then Minister, Frank Anthony, in charge of the CARIFESTAS Secretariat, was aware of non-payment. Mr. John nodded that he was. Fortunately a friend of mine from forty years back was standing less than a foot from me in the store. She sits in the leadership of the PPP and is a good friend of Frank Anthony. She is Mitra Devi Ali, former Ambassador to Cuba. I have known this woman for a long time. She is the wife of Fazil Ali (deceased) of the Rice Producers’ Association. Despite the difference in politics, my relation with her and her eldest son, Maxim has always been very cordial and correct.  I believe Mitra Devi Ali, along with former Head of GOINVEST, Jeff DaSilva are two decent, honest persons the PPP Administration produced. Mitra was a student of mine at UG when she was doing law.
I wanted to talk to Anthony in front of Mr. John and Mitra to get his response to the hundreds of small people that he, Anthony, failed to pay for services and goods delivered to CARIFESTA. I asked Mitra for his number. She called Freedom House to get it. She didn’t. But Mitra told me that Anthony is in private medical practice with the son of former PPP Minister, Nanda Gopaul.   Dr. Ghansham Singh’s name does not go down well with me. Gail Teixeira installed him on the Council of the University of Guyana where he argued for the termination of my contract. How interesting! Two failed politicians are practicing medicine. Maybe they should have stuck to medicine.
I tried getting Anthony for this column but each time I go to his private clinic, it is closed. Maybe he and Singh do not get patients. I promised Mr. John I will do this article, so I couldn’t wait on Anthony even though I wasn’t sure he would have granted me an interview. Readers need to note the words that  came out of Mr. John’s mouth when he made his complaint – “Mr Kissoon if they can pay BK why they can’t pay me?”
The man is right. The Government of Guyana has paid BK Tiwari billions of dollars Tiwari claims the Government owed him during the tenure of the PPP in office. The official position of the State is that it will continue to honour these debts that the State has with Tiwari. So what about that little guy who runs his stationery service on King Street? Mr. John said the sum is $1.9 million. That is peanuts. So why Tiwari and not John? Are there readers here that do not know the answer to that question? This is what Guyana is like. The small people that delivered goods and services for the construction of the Durban Park are yet to be paid.
Enter the President of Guyana. How can Mr. Granger allow these egregious omissions of his government to continue? Why must BK be paid and not the small contractors of the Durban Park project? The last time I wrote on the Durban Park contractors the amount owed was a mere fraction of what BK received. The first payment to BK was for $5 million American. The Durban Park contractors are owed a mere fraction of that. Total debts to small people for CARIFESTA do not amount to even a hundred million.
Life in Guyana is a tangled web of evil politics.  The Mayor of Georgetown who signed the most infamous business contract in the history of the world and the man who didn’t pay the Durban Park contractors have just been elected to the leadership of the ruling party. Nietzsche’s Ubermensch has to save Guyana.

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