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Former engineer being made an example, poor fella

Apr 29, 2022 Letters

Dear Editor,

The parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) finally got off its throne and went after someone. Looking on the positive side, it is something of a start, but the PAC can’t stop with just this one allegedly former state engineer. I think he has been singled out for police attention for reasons both good and bad, and which are reflective of the ways of Guyana.
The good is that the PAC gets to demonstrate that is on the job, and pushing for principled practices. More of the good came in what was nothing less than the astonishing: both the PPP and PNC (let’s cut this nonsense about ‘C’ and ‘R’) stood shoulder to shoulder in calling the police on this poor fella. Get me straight I have neither patience nor truck for those who rip-off the system and then compound the damage(s) by engaging in deceptions. If the man is found to have erred, then hurl the book at him, make an example of him. Regrettably, this is where the good comes to an end.
I am deciding where to begin with the bad, given there are so many areas, choices, and what I would label disturbances around public works projects. The PAC has to be aware that at least 90 percent of the public servants and regionals that come before its hearings are lying through their teeth, covering up, protecting something or someone. There were rich pickings from the people who sat before them to phone for the police. This should have been done in numerous instances involving PPP and PNC agents, but was not. Why? The bad extends to the protections rackets that were being run by the PAC over the years. To shine the light more brightly, which party and which member(s) were protecting their bedfellows? It would be those who cheated the system, didn’t follow set procedures, never implemented sound recommendations offered and put in writing, saw to it that supporting records vanished, and arranged for errant people to make themselves unavailable, meaning, for PAC scrutiny and other purposes.
Further, I am all for small beginnings, and the first step taken (and all that jazz), but in the grand scheme of projects and monies paid and lost, of projects delivered or delayed, and of financially enhanced works that still failed to measure up either to specifications or expectations, this small-time former engineer is the smallest of small fishes. I am baffled that he is without political friends, with the word filtering down to the appropriate side of the PAC to go easy on him, and move on to other matters. This is unheard of in Guyana, which brings me to what cardinal sin he committed.
The ones I can think of are failure to hold up his end of the arrangement struck, which has nothing to do with job performance. Or shortchanging the needs of an expectant political principal. Or being just a plain damn fool and not reading his work and operational environments correctly. A part of me harbours this kind of thinking because the PPP and PNC members do not join hands to condemn failing engineers. He must have disappointed somebody on the food chain (collections), or got in the way of people who wanted him out of the way. What makes matters a shade more pronounced is that the man is a former worker. For the PAC to want to haul him over the coals tells me that this is more than righteous indignation. The energy level and brightness of action relays to me that this man angered somebody, wronged someone, which is why he is now made the poster boy for supposedly spirited PAC correction.

Sincerely,
GHK Lall

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