Pickpocket investors

Jul 14, 2019 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

It is pay day. You go the Pay Office and uplift your monthly earnings. As you are walking out, you notice a fellow worker closely watching at you. You begin to feel concerned about your money which you have placed in your trousers’ pocket.
As you are exiting the Pay Office, the fellow worker bumps into you. He apologizes for doing so. He then invites you for a drink. He says, “I am buying.” You decide to go.
All that afternoon, your fellow worker is spending lavishly at the watering hole. You tell yourself that he is overindulging, and so when he asks you what you want to eat, you tell him you are not hungry. This does not deter him from ordering the most expensive meal on the menu for himself. You wonder, at the rate he is going, whether he is going to spend out his entire month’s salary on this binge.
At the end of the session, you bid him goodbye. True to his word he pays the bill. While waiting for the cab to take you home, you place your hands in your trouser pockets and realize to your horror that your wallet is missing.
Then it dawns on you that when your fellow worker had bumped into you outside the Pay Office, it was no accident. When you had felt his hands touch your pocket, it was no accident. It was then and there that he had picked your wallet.
But you were so blinded by his invitation for a drink and for him to finance the whole thing that you did not realize that in that moment, he had relieved you of your wallet containing your month’s earnings. You realize also that all the money he spent that afternoon was your money. He had a good time on your money.
This is exactly what is happening to Guyana in the oil and gas sector. Some companies are coming here and setting up shop. They are promising jobs to locals. But many of them are pickpocket investors. All they are doing is exploiting Guyanese for their own benefit.
These pickpocket investors are good at making promises. They dangle the prospects of jobs in front of the faces of Guyanese, but no one is watching their hands. While they are doing their ‘magic act’ of promises, their hands are in your pockets, stealing what belongs to you.
They employ a few Guyanese to do the low-paying jobs, just like some of the oil exploration companies which offer Guyanese the jobs of cooks, chefs and cleaners, while the top engineering jobs go to foreign nationals who rake in the big bucks.
They are receiving the big contracts from their friends in the oil and gas sector. They take the hog of the money, pay Guyanese a pittance, and smile all the way to the bank.
Yet, Guyanese continue to be impressed when these foreign oil and gas companies boast about how many locals they employ. But they never state just what percentage of the total payroll goes to locals as against foreigners. They do not admit that, in many instances, the locals continue to occupy the low rungs in the company, while the top jobs go to the foreigners.
Guyanese are being offered crumbs while the foreign workers are hogging the whole loaf. To add insult to injury, it is our own money which is being used to rip us off.
This is no different from the man who took his fellow worker out for a drink. The man picked his colleague’s pocket and then entertained his colleague with his colleague’s money.
Every cent that is being spent in the oil and gas sector is recoverable by the oil companies as cost recovery. Every cent that these companies spend has to be repaid by you, me and our children and grandchildren. It is costing these companies nothing. They are being paid by the oil companies, who in turn will send the bill to Guyana to deduct from the earnings from the sale of oil.
And to further rub salt in our wound, we have some organizations who are opportunistically championing these investments. They are welcoming and encouraging pickpocket investors.
Foreign investors are not coming here to help us; they are coming here to tell us what to do in our own home. This is not just robbery; it is robbery in broad daylight.

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