A year has gone. Will we learn from it?

Dec 31, 2021 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News – All columnists look back as the year moves into history on its last day. I will do just that. For now, I end this final 2021 offering on a theme that has bothered me long before I entered UG as a radical freshman many, many moons ago. Guyana should produce, manufacture and industrialise.
We must cultivate our own vegetables and fruits and we should support those who sell local stuff once the price is right, once the finished product is good. Do you know my home only uses a dishwashing liquid named Hygenol?
It is bottled by Twins Manufacturers. I never knew anyone from that company. Never saw or met anyone from that company. I was told decades ago that the owner is the head of the Central Islamic Organization of Guyana (CIOG). Here is what I know that is graphically factual.
The CIOG does phenomenal charity work. I had seen that two months ago. My friend Timol Huggins’ mother died and the CIOG provided all facilities including bathing the dead. I know this first hand; my wife and I were there. Why if I know this I would buy a dishwashing liquid from a foreign country? But more importantly, it is not an inferior product, comparatively speaking.
This is one of the lessons that we should learn from 2021. There must be a new mentality as we go into 2022. But maybe we are too far gone to adjust. I think one of the things we should take into 2022 is what obtains in all other countries – punish horrible, uncivilised drivers by the use of surveillance cameras.
I once described a story on this page maybe about 15 years ago how a deserter from the US army during the Vietnam War was discovered after 20 years living in New Zealand. He was employed to collect coins from the parking machines. The cameras picked him up stealing the money. A check on his personal details revealed who exactly he was.
Outfit Guyana with such cameras and at the end of the year, two things will happen. The police force will collect millions of dollars in fines and the police will haul into their net thousands of defaulters. I have done five columns on the two roundabouts that were landscaped at the Kitty pump station and at Sherriff Street and the Railway Embankment.
In all the articles, I argued that I did not see the improvement in traffic behaviour and I lamented the removal of the traffic signals. Since I did the first one in April 2018, I have received dozens of emails from people abroad telling me that ‘roundabouts’ is the way to go. They see them operating smoothly but they think they are not working in Guyana because our drivers are donkeys.
They are right. My experience with roundabouts tells me that I prefer traffic lights. So make the roundabouts effective by placing signs that say – “yield.” If drivers don’t, they are in violation and the cameras are the proof.
Something happened this year and come 2022 we will be contemptuous of the lesson that should have been learned. An old man soliciting at the junction of Avenue of the Republic and Regent Street was run over. He had four working limbs. City attorney, K. Juman-Yassin wrote a letter lamenting what happened to the poor soul.
For over eight years now, two men, each having only one foot, have been soliciting at two of the busiest junctions in the entire country – Sheriff Street and the Rupert Craig Highway and Railway Embankment and Conversation Tree. When I saw this eight years ago, I wrote about it.
Every president, prime minister, Cabinet minister police chief, traffic chief since eight years ago must have seen the balancing act of these two men. These guys step in and out of the traffic and cannot do it with ease because they are physically challenged. Each time I see them, I just hope it is not me that have to spend hours at the police station.
So 2021 ends today, will we move forward? Will the commercial banks operate with commonsense? In 2022, will it be the same as it was 100 years ago that only six categories of persons can sign an old age pension form, a UG pension form, an NIS pension form?
Do you know a simple memorandum from the respective institution widening the categories of signatories can bring this horrible backwardness to an end? Long ago, there was a robbery at the financial office at UG. The then financial chief, Mr. John Seeram, unreasonably demanded students pay with a bank cheque. UG has to be the only university in the world where this happens. It must end in 2022.
(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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