Here is a piece of Guyana for you

Jun 21, 2018 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

As a human rights activist, I get countless emails, texts, telephone calls from complete strangers of which 98 percent are deleted. The volume is just too much. I erase them out of the fear that the phone and my mail box would get so clogged that I would be required to remove the data anyway.
Most of the things I received over the past twelve years after the email system became popular here are people’s trials, tribulation, traumas and tragedies in Guyana. This week I got an email that I just felt the need to publish. I replied, asking the sender to let me publish his name and his other details. I received verification of his existence then came the usual bizarre reply – “yes, you can go ahead, but please don’t publish my name.”
If you know the details of some of these senders, you would definitely wish this world would rid itself of the nationality that goes under the name – Guyanese. Some of these people migrated a long time ago, live in Canada and the US where they have citizenship and good jobs and have no essential financial or sociological connections with Guyana, but would be afraid to be named. Many times their excuse is they have cousins or friends left in Guyana and those people could be victimized. This is sickening nonsense, since many of the things they write me on are not political criticism.
If you email me from New York to say when you were on holiday in Guyana, your cousin was driving, he went through the amber, the traffic rank demanded and received a bribe, then why are you afraid of telling us who you are? What are you afraid of? The Police Commissioner will order the airport to record your name and the next time you come to Guyana, you will be jailed? If you think so, you are an idiot who should never visit Guyana again. Many of the emails I get are like this.
In the case of the email I am publishing, although the New Amsterdam hospital is responsible for the death of his father and they treated him badly when he took his sick father there, this gentleman emailed me to ask that I not name him because his parents’ home is near the grandparents’ house of an important Berbice health official. This is the reason why this gentleman does not want to be named.
Here is the email he sent me, parts of which are deleted; “I was just reading your article, and I couldn’t agree with you more. I saw you mentioned your mom. I had first-hand experience of the medical incompetence in Guyana when my father took ill back in March, when I visited (as I normally do for his birthday on March 21st).We arrived at the emergency facility at approximately 0600. The man was passing blood. They kept him waiting in the emergency unit for in excess of twelve hours. I spoke to four different doctors whilst waiting for my father to be admitted, and I kept telling them to refer to his record. At approximately 4PM, they asked me to (they couldn’t find a porter) take him to radiology for an x-ray.
Look I don’t want to bore you, but my father passed away the following night without receiving any proper treatment. My father was taken to the emergency unit at 6AM, he was admitted at approximately 6.15 PM, and do you know some idiot came to me at about 16:45 PM (don’t know whether he was a nurse or doctor) to tell me to kindly take off my hat?
I hit the roof. Oh, I almost forgot. Me and my father shared a joint checking account at Republic Bank; do you know how many documents they gave me to complete and notarize here in the US? They even want a letter from my job, as well as my credit report? They even asked for me to submit a notarized copy of my US checking account among other things? Ridiculous!”
What do readers think of this email? I have received many more heart-breaking ones like this about what a broken down, wasteland this country has become. I will from time to time publish these things once I verify the sender is a real person. The reason why I chose this one is to let readers know that I believe not one doctor gets sanctioned with de-registration because of their neglect of patients who die. Why? Who cares about poor people dying at State-run hospitals? The world knows life is very, very cheap in Guyana.

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Here is a piece of Guyana for you

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