Backward Guyana and what it does to poor people

Aug 29, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

I hear it quite often from people; “Freddie you write on too much negatives about Guyana.” And each time my reply would be the same; “You write about these things so Guyana can change for the better.”
Before he left for his teaching job back in the US, David Hinds and I had lunch, and he did bring up the subject that people would tell him I write too much negative things. David said his response would always be; “But isn’t he writing about what takes place in Guyana?”
So yesterday, I had a conversation with someone close, and she brought up the negative writings. I told her that last Thursday, I reported a leaking pipe under the road on Church Street outside the National Library, and I advised her to go back at that spot one month from now and that pipe would still be running and that part of the road would still be sinking. This is the reason for the constant lamentations, because you write in the hope that your country will improve, but that becomes a mirage.
I have seen unchanging things in my lifetime in this land that I honestly believe modern society will not see in another country on the globe. So you have to keep writing, and you hope one day these negative things will disappear from this land.
Because of that conversation I had yesterday, I will offer you examples of bizarre, unchanging life in Guyana. The Office of Professional Responsibility contacted the publisher of this newspaper, Mr. Glenn Lall, directly, to inform him that it sent a rank to Kaieteur News to take a statement from me on random traffic stops that I witnessed, but no statement was forthcoming.
In front of the seniors at Kaieteur News, Mr. Lall told me it was unfair to knock the police in my columns and when the police are ready to act I am not cooperating. I submitted the statement. That was the second one in a year. Two months ago, the same police office contacted my home for me to submit a statement on random stops that I saw by Parliament Building, and that I wrote about. That means in the space of two years I gave three statements.
Last week I saw random stops by Parliament Building and I wrote about it again, making it about ten columns that I mentioned routine stops by traffic ranks. What changes in this country?
What you are about to read in the lines below was the feature of an entire column four years ago; nothing has changed since. One day I was in the bank, and the thought just occurred to me to inquire if NIS was dutifully sending in my pension cheques. I was told that for five months no cheques came from the NIS. The same day I flew to the NIS. The explanation was that the pension official had rejected my referee – that is the person who has to sign your form to verify you are still alive.
My referee was one of the most known UG academics in Guyana and a highly qualified man. NIS told me that the pension official stuck with what was printed on the form – only eight categories of persons in Guyana can sign the form. The list is: Justice of the Peace, minister of religion, medical doctor, head teacher, superintendent of police, senior public servant, bank manager, president of a trade union.
Do you see how backward this country is? Only a medical doctor. Not a doctor in engineering or biology. A lawyer, businessman, journalist cannot sign. The list is the same for UG, minus senior public servant and president of a trade union. It is the same for passport applicants.
This is what we have inherited from the colonials, and fifty-one years after Independence we have kept these nonsensical things. The situation remains the same for pensioners in the public service too. And when you write about these backward morbidities, people tell you that you are too negative. Think of the problems poor people have in finding persons in those eight categories. Why can’t a poor cleaner who worked thirty years for her well-known employer ask him/her to sign her NIS form?
Just imagine; if I didn’t make an inquiry at the bank, I would not have been receiving my NIS pension. So I write too much about the wrong things in my country, eh? But to what extent have these wrong things disappeared?
I write what I believe in, and I believe with flowing oil money in 2022, the traffic signals would still not work.

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Backward Guyana and what it does to poor people

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