Crowds, chaos and complaints

Feb 23, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Peeping Tom…

Kaieteur News- The folly of the cash grant distribution is a textbook case of what happens when a government, eager to appear benevolent, stumbles into an exercise that is beyond its planning skills. It is a great deal easier to announce a cash grant than it is to distribute it. And yet, in the eagerness to dole out money, the administration failed to see what lay ahead—crowds, chaos, and complaints.

At the heart of this misadventure is a government that has never been known for its logistical prowess. The present situation should surprise no one. A nation-wide distribution of funds requires more than just announcing dates and locations. It demands an understanding of human nature—something policymakers often forget.

When people have been promised money, they will show up in droves, not out of greed, but out of necessity, out of a distrust of bureaucracies that have failed them before, out of a deep-seated fear that their portion may somehow slip through the cracks or which may see someone else collecting their cheque. And so, they come in numbers, pushing and jostling to get what has been promised, only to be met with a system ill-prepared for the rush.

Faced with crowds too large to manage, the government has resorted to asking people to space out their visits. This is a request unlikely to be heeded. A person who has been waiting months for a grant will not risk another delay. There is, too, the quiet but persistent fear that if they do not claim it today, it might vanish tomorrow. Such is the nature of public handouts in societies where trust in governance is fragile.

It did not have to be this way. A few simple adjustments might have saved the exercise from devolving into a test of patience and endurance. The first, and perhaps most obvious, would have been to restrict distribution to weekends. It is an unnecessary burden to ask workers to take time off to collect a grant, particularly at a time when employers are reluctant to grant leave. With businesses already grappling with staffing shortages, losing employees to long, frustrating queues is an additional inconvenience.

A second, equally practical, measure would have been to use school buildings for the distribution process. Schools, with their multiple classrooms, offer an ideal setting to organize recipients alphabetically, reducing congestion. Instead of corralling people under a tent, where disorder is almost guaranteed, they could have been directed into rooms corresponding to their last names. The process would have been orderly, the crowding less severe. It would require additional staff, yes, but such investments pale in comparison to the human frustration and economic losses incurred by the current disorder. You should not be distributing a cash grant from one elongated table.

Beyond logistics, there is an element of exploitation that has crept into the process. Some businesspeople have taken to cashing these government-issued cheques for a fee—$5000 per transaction, by some reports. This is profiteering at its most blatant, and yet it continues unchecked. A simple directive banning such practices could curb this secondary market of opportunism.

Had there been more prudence, the entire exercise could have been handled differently. The introduction of a digital identification card is in the making – or so one hopes. Had the government waited, the process might have been far smoother. A digital system would have eliminated fraudulent claims—those made under maiden and married names, those submitted by individuals now residing abroad. The grant could have been paid directly into digital envelopes, transferred seamlessly into bank accounts. But the government, as is often the case, chose speed over prudence, visibility over efficiency.

The sheer number of registrations suggests something amiss. We were told that more than 600,000 persons had registered. This raises red flags considering that in a country with a high voter turnout, fewer than 500,000 persons voted at the last general and regional elections.

Either some fraud is at play, or thousands of recipients do not even reside in the country. A digital ID system would have addressed both concerns, ensuring that only those genuinely eligible received assistance. But now, having rushed ahead without guardrails, the government will find itself scrambling to investigate irregularities after the fact, a task far more difficult than preventing them in the first place.

And so, for now, the public must endure the muddle. They must stand in the heat, shuffle through disorderly lines, bear the weight of inefficiency. The government will press ahead, perhaps making minor adjustments, but fundamentally resistant to external advice. It does not like to be told what to do unless the counsel comes from within its own circle.

The cash grant exercise should never have been merely about handing out money. It was a test of planning, of foresight, of the ability to manage something more complex than a press release. On all these fronts, the government has faltered. The exercise, meant to bring relief, has instead become a source of frustration. A government eager to be seen as generous has exposed itself as unprepared. The lesson, if anyone in power cares to learn it, is that generosity without organization is just another form of incompetence.

(Crowds, chaos and complaints)

(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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