The monster is the government not the public servant

Sep 27, 2019 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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If you want to see how backward this country is, then ask yourself a logical question about a letter in the newspapers by a person who signed as Louis Holder. It is not the contents of the letter which graphically describes the 18th century functions that characterise state service to citizens, but why such letters are not written each day.

The answer is that a nation of sheep do not write complaints to the press. Sheep do not complain at all. Mr. Holder elaborates on incredible, archaic delivery systems in the public sector that ought to drive deep pessimism in humans who inhabit this wasteland named Guyana.
When I read that missive, anger overtook me. Exxon, Exxon, Exxon is the stuck record being played. Well alright, the Exxon contract was bad. Say it and say it again, but talk about other shambolic aspects of life that people find unbearable here.
There are thousands of humans in this country that don’t care about the Exxon deal, but want better service for them and their children. They want to go and clear a barrel sent that has food that they need, clothes they have to wear. Why must they travel from Mahaica to Georgetown to collect necessities of life, only to spend six hours in waiting?
Mr. Holder zeroes in on GRA, NIS, the Commercial Registry, the central post office and payment by ministries for goods and services delivered. The letter-writer referred to handwritten receipts given to customers at the Commercial Registry. Leonard Craig of the AFC and I encountered that nightmare six years ago, and I did a column on it. And to think as recent as last Sunday, in 2019, a citizen laments that morbid backwardness in a Caribbean country in the 21st century.
Mr. Holder writes in relation to the central post office; “The guard, whose function is to manage ingress into the mail delivery room, sends customers away if they are not in possession of a roll of adhesive tape required to re-tape packages.” He observes that these things “will only cease with proper evaluation systems for people put in charge of managing the various government departments, and when they are properly held responsible for reducing cost to both the government and its customer.”
This is where Mr. Holder misses the point. People put in charge of managing a system can only administer their office within guidelines and legal rules set out by the state. The guard will send people away who come to post parcels without their own roll of scotch tape because that is his function. He does not provide the tape. The Ministry of Public Telecommunications has to pass down an instruction that the post office must have tape to rewrap customers’ cartons. Don’t blame the guard. Blame those who make policies.
If you have a state service where the six employees in the office are scheduled to have their lunch-break at noon, they will take it. That is their entitlement. It is for the minister in charge of that office to devise a system to stagger the lunch system so that two go at 11 am, two go at 12pm and two go at 1pm. This is not a fictional example. This is the norm at many government buildings.
The US Ambassador to Guyana in a recent address pointed to the fact that Guyana has dropped down the index from 2018 in the ease with which investment arrangements are done in Guyana (see my column of Tuesday July 9, 2019 captioned, “Dozens of American ambassadors said it before.”). We will continue to drop, because the cruel reality Guyanese have to live with is that their leaders are incompetent and virtually don’t care about those things that Mr. Holder wrote about.
From Jagdeo through to Ramotar to Granger, these were/are leaders who have no concern about citizens having to waste an entire hour, because the staff at certain state institutions takes their lunch break at the same time. In another column, I will offer you my experience at one such place. You will never accept that given the function of that office, employees should be on their lunch date all at the same time.
President Granger frowned on women having to conform to certain types of clothes, given our tropical climate, before they enter a public office. He was quoted on the front page of the Chronicle on his view. But if the Office of the President does not send out instructions, those signs will remain on public buildings, because the heads of state institutions have received no written edict. Sad country, sad people that no amount of oil money will help.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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