The government and Guyanese people must reject these monkey antics

Jul 13, 2022 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Kaieteur News- In 2018, I went to the parcel section of the post office to post three books to my daughter who was studying in London. Before me, a man had a box being examined when I heard the attendant asked him for proof of address.

The next day, I went to see an attorney Nirvan Singh, the son of my friend, the former chancellor Carl Singh. The lawyer told me for him to file a case against the post office, I must have locus standi, meaning I must be the person affected or get the person who is affected.

The post office in any country will be on the look-out for illegal things being sent abroad. So they examine outgoing and incoming mail. Everything in this life is context. Because of context, I have done several columns berating the commercial banks for a policy that is purely asinine and lacks commonsense and which no government should tolerate.

A bank book with 5 million Guyanese dollars sitting with that sum for over 10 years should not be on the radar of any commercial bank simply because money laundering is the use of financial institutions to make illegally acquired money legal.

Movement of money into the institution without a logical pattern of earning is money laundering. A man sold his property in 2010, put the money in the bank for hard times. After 10 years why require him to conform to the anti-money-laundering law when he isn’t moving any money in your bank? The traffic policeman cannot ask the cycle rider to produce his roads vehicular licence from the GRA. He doesn’t use a vehicle. The commercial banks behave as silly as that and an entire nation with an active media landscape and a central government accepts these monkey antics.

Now for monkey antics at the post office. The attendant looked at the three books, searched the pages and accepted them. It only makes sense asking for proof of address if the parcel cannot be searched. What happens then is the police will contact the sender at the address because something prohibited was found in the package.

I quote from my article of Friday, May 25, 2018 titled; “Post office, AFC, magistrates; what a shit-hole country!” “How did we become like this? How did this nation become so asinine, moronic and primitive? The Post Office Corporation issued the requirements for posting a parcel overseas – a post office stamp on an envelope not older than three months. An entire nation with two lawyers’ associations that cover 1220 attorneys knowing this is a constitutional violation will not lift a finger to stop this atrocity. This is what a nation in the 21^st century has descended to.”

Now we have a letter in this newspaper of Friday, July 9, 2022 in which Mrs. Saudia Ferouz informed the people of a country named Guyana that she wants to send her daughter a birthday card but the post office wants to have the telephone number of the recipient of the card.

That is a sickening invasion of privacy. Why should the post office get the private telephone number of a citizen who is not using the service of the post office? It is a letter going to the recipient; she isn’t asking the post office for a facility. Requiring the sender to put his/her telephone number is also an invasion of privacy.

It is simple when you post a letter. There is the recipient name and address and the sender’s name and address. People do not like to give out their telephone numbers especially in an age when the landline is becoming obsolete because of cell phone. Go to any commercial bank and look at the business card of their managers. It has the direct line but not the cell number.

Each day I live in this country, I am getting more and more confused. Every week, for the past seven weeks, the Stabroek News publishes an interview with a civil society organisation. When I read Mrs. Ferouz’s letter, the first thing that came to my mind is if civil society will find a tiny amount of time or an ounce of energy to devote to these violations.

It is an abuse of the rights of a citizen to tell them they must be in possession of the envelope of a post office correspondence with a stamp before one can post anything at the post office. A majority of people in the world are not in possession of a post office envelope. The previous government did not stop these monkey antics. The present government should.

(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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