Where are the higher incomes and improved social welfare?

Dec 09, 2016 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Perhaps the greatest abuses perpetrated against our Guyanese masses have been their impoverishment and the subjection to the brutal system of injustice that has accompanied it. The dismal failures of successive governments have rendered the masses poor, and in many instances, uneducated. This combination of factors has yielded a society where many have little scope for opportunity to live a normal life that includes a well-paying job and raising educated children who can survive in tomorrow’s world.
Our governments have acknowledged the massive impoverishment suffered through Guyana’s structural adjustment policies of the late 80’s and early 90’s. Even after benefitting from higher tax revenues, particularly VAT, these governments have continuously dreamed up massive capital expenditure projects, for which they also have had to borrow in many instances, to pan off to their friends and cronies in the private sector, enriching themselves through corruption while laying bare their bosom with the lie that the government doesn’t have any money, or the government can’t find any money to pay them. A quick check over the years will reveal that literally hundreds of billions (not millions) of dollars in taxpayers’ money, including foreign loans which Guyanese will have to repay, have been spent on capital projects.
The questions here are: Where are the jobs?
Where are the higher incomes Where is the improved social welfare? Why do our civil servants, from our police who are entrusted to enforce justice, to other members of the public service, have to resort to soliciting bribes in order to survive? Why do many of our womenfolk have to engage in promiscuous activities to support themselves and their families? Are Guyanese better off for the expenditure of all of these hundreds of billions of dollars?
The billions of dollars lost to corruption and cronyism could in fact have been used to engineer a stronger macroeconomic framework that would have supported government paying increased salaries to public servants to lift incomes and expenditures in the economy.
Contributing to all of this has been our very own private sector, from financial and other service companies to mining, manufacturing and commercial/retail companies. These business organizations have fed off of the social chaos precipitated by our governments, and systematically engorged themselves on profit of the labour of the masses, underpaying workers, which translates as robbing them of their fair pay, share in the benefits of their labour, and the opportunity to look after their children and prepare them for tomorrow’s world.
After the collapse of our economy in the 1980s, these businesses, taking advantage of the prevailing massive levels of unemployment that still exist even today, have consistently and unjustly underpaid their workers when they were more than capable of compensating them their just due.
Notable examples of these companies include those household names which make several hundreds of millions of dollars in profits alone on an annual basis.
These very same businesses who today portray themselves out as paragons for a better world, have in fact helped to maintain Guyanese in a state of poverty and contributed to many instances of social decay, from ill-health, to poor education, to the resulting crime and increasing erosion of social values that we witness today, which seems to be catapulting many of our children back into the dark ages of ignorance. These businesses, along with our successive governments, have contributed to what I call the Arrested Development of our society.
In light of the problems identified, some obvious recommendations come to mind:
1. The Ministry of Legal Affairs should collaborate with the Guyana Police Force to establish a unit with specific responsibilities for policing the justice system to identify and disbar those lawyers engaged in bribing the courts and also address those employed by the justice system that aid and abet the corruption of the courts.
2. The workers who have been robbed by their employers need to decide how to approach recouping their lost benefits. Further, private employers need to adopt the socially responsible position of paying workers their fair wages and ensure that their NIS benefits are properly remunerated. The target on fair wages should start at $130,000 per month for the lowest paid worker.
3. Government needs to re-examine the effectiveness of its capital expenditure programs, both in quantity and quality, and in terms of the benefits that are expected to accrue to society. Secondly, it is incumbent upon government to correct past failures by adopting policies that facilitate a proactive stance on raising the ordinary Guyanese out of the systemic poverty that resulted from the adoption of the earlier mentioned structural adjustment policies. Increases in salaries can be easily and effectively managed so as to mitigate their impact on prices. It should also be noted that this will assist in eliminating systemic corruption, which will go a long way to marketing Guyana as a destination for both foreign investment and tourism.
Craig Sylvester

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