H@RD TRUTHS BY GHK LALL – Remittances: more than relief, revelations also

Dec 22, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – I really should be focused on December and the season, which are my favorite times of the year.  Time to gear down, slowdown, and tone down.  It is time that there is looking inward, and starting to space out these contributions.  But there is still some pending business to close down.

According to the World Bank, remittances from overseas to Guyanese amounted to US$380M, US$429M, US$548M, 548M, and US$549M for the years 2019 to 2023 respectively.  On the surface that represents an extraordinary amount of generosity, numerous significant expressions of care and compassion from Guyanese friends and families overseas to their own.  It is the sum of many kind gestures those hundreds of American millions remitted back here on an annual basis.  I bow and applaud.  But those numbers reveal so much more than a helping hand, and being a timely friend or relative.  It assists to put this against the light, and peer behind the curtain.

In the last three years (2021-23), remittances amounted to close to GY$110 billion annually, which was a 27% increase on 2020.  Considering 2019 with remittances reported at US$380M (GY$76B) and 2023 US$549M (GY$110B), is an increase of 44%.  In all other impoverished countries of the world that 44% increase in remittances would be a most welcomed development. But not Guyana.  I repeat: not the Guyana of today, not with all that we have, not with all that this country receives (could get), and must have.  In a nutshell, there are too many Guyanese who need so much, are short so much.  We have heard so often about the richest, brightest, and swiftest country in the world that it is jading.  It is now embarrassing with so many Guyanese so dependent on the rescuing lifeline of a dollar from overseas.  It is a big dollar in the last three years: GY$110 billion.  Amid all the pretty presidential pontifications, and clever vice-presidential submissions, this is where and what Guyanese are.  A basket case.  A hand-to-mouth case.  A charity case.  Possibly a remittance-to-remittance case.  Has Laparkan called yet?  Why is the money transfer place taking so long when the hurting is so bad?  This is reducing remittances to flesh and blood pain in our Guyana.

I urge my fellow citizens to try this one to see where it brings them.  Remove this GY$110 billion from the hands of recipients and it should bring acute heaviness of what their circumstances would be.  Takeaway a half only, and GY$55 billion less looks like a living nightmare for Guyanese recipients.  But this is what His Excellency, President Ali does not want to hear about, and about which former President Jagdeo is incited to stridency and petulancy.  Plus whatever else his henchmen feel fit to employ to purge such unbecoming narratives, and menace the people responsible for them.  For it stands to reason that the Guyanese who are the grateful recipients are not those considered of middle-class stock, or the ruling class aristocracy.  The great majority of local recipients are those at that point on the ladder, where the thorns and grass cluster.  Minimum wagers with relatives and friends somewhere beyond the borders; pensioners with children or siblings who are resident ‘outside’; public servants and others with those in foreign habitats who remember them. These are the wretched of Guyana, who are forced to swallow their pride, and stretch out their hand. Dr. Ashni Singh, is there still that cold-bloodedness and shallowness, when this is the reality of struggling Guyanese with a national budget closing in on that breathtaking line: one trillion Guyana dollars.

I am tired, but the night is still long, and I must go on.  The World Bank figures are based on official numbers.  This venerable institution’s number do not capture the thousands (more accurately tens of thousands) of Guyanese who visit, and leave a ‘raise’ with a friend, a neighbor, a family member.  Every US$20, or US$50 adds up, contributes something to those who are helped, makes a difference in their sometimes rugged, if not ragged, life.  The barrels that are loaded and looked for with so much yearning here also speak most loudly, though those are also not included in the World Bank’s graph and tabs.  This is the result when Guyanese across the length and breadth of this country are not fair and full participants in the gifts given to this land.

When this is part of the economic environment, and to this degree, then those in charge of policy and decisions count for a waste of space, are nothing but the proverbial empty barrel.  When those who shrink or circle around from standing up and getting in-the-face, then they betray all Guyanese.  When they fail to apply the sternest of tests to those same policymakers and decision makers to effect change for the better, then they also are unworthy of their roles, fall apart in doing their duty to their contemporaries. When I think of GY$110 billion in remittances each year for the last three years in this time of fat, what has been done with all the money that came into official coffers?  Who really are the Guyanese who came into a real share of that money?  I have said more than enough, it is time I go.

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

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• GHK Lall, H@rd Truths, relief, revelations, time

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