Tighten your belts

Jul 29, 2017 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

When PNCR politicians used words beginning with the prefix ‘re’ it used to be a signal of hard times to come. Guyanese were familiar with ‘redeployment’ and ‘retrenchment’. These words were used to mean ‘dismissal’.
One secretary at the Guyana Electricity Corporation felt real important when her boss called her into his office and told her he had a highly confidential assignment for her. He asked her when she would type up the names of the hundred or more employees of the company who had to be redeployed.
The secretary told him not to bother. She would do it and no one would know about the names on the list. A few minutes later she fainted when she saw her own name on the list.
Her boss sent for some smelling salts. She was revived. The boss decided that it was too much to have her type her own name on the retrenchment list. He decided to break the news to her as best as he could.
He turned to her and said, “Miss, I do not know how we are going to do without you, but come next Monday we are going to try.” She fainted again.
The word ‘retirement’ used to be dreaded by workers. It meant going home for good without knowing what the future will bring. Since the APNU has taken office, the word has assumed a new meaning. It means “the possibility of being rehired.”
Right now we have a lot of retirees working in the government. They ought to be fired. You have a lot of people twiddling their thumbs, being paid handsomely but doing very little. Then there are those who are so old that they can hardly keep their eyes open on the job. They are sleeping on the job.
One retiree who has been reemployed had the temerity to boast that he worked eight hours and slept eight hours. His boss turned to him and said, “Unfortunately, you are doing both at the same time.”
Two ex-soldiers who were rehired by the APNU+AFC government were recently chatting under a tree during their extended lunch break. One of them turned to the other and said, “I glad for the li’l wuk but my body is not. It is just full of aches and pains. I know you’re about my age. How do you feel?”
The other one said, “I feel just like a newborn baby.”
“Really! Like a newborn baby?”
“Yep! No hair, no teeth, and I think I just wet my pants.”
These persons need to be reassigned to where they can be more active rather than swelling the public sector wage bill. But reassignment is not the same as redeployment or retrenchment.
So, be careful when politicians used words beginning with the prefix ‘re’. It could be a bad omen.
The Minister of Finance says that the economy is still in the readjustment mode. Some people are interpreting this to mean workers will have to make sacrifices in the future. Already we know that revenues are down because imports are down.
The economy is still expected to grow because gold is kicking dust but as we all know there is no trickledown effect from gold to everyone. Things are getting tighter and this government knows only one response to economic slowdown. Tighten you belts!
Pressure is around the corner. Bind your belly and bear you chafe. Till the oil money come.
But as they say, Guyanese have a way of getting much done with little.
A beautiful woman enters a bar and sits next to a man. “Listen honey,” she says “For $5000, I’ll do absolutely anything you want.” The man looks around, pulls out a $5000 bill from his wallet and says, “Paint my house.”

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