A comedy in reverse

Sep 13, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – There’s a certain absurdity in the President summoning the commercial banking sector to a grand meeting, the theme of which was, apparently, “What do you need to modernize your operations?”

It’s like me inviting Albert Einstein over to explain to him the mysteries of long division. Or like consulting Netflix about whether it has considered digitizing movies. The banks, bless them, have been living in the twenty-first century for some time now. The government, on the other hand, is still struggling to get past the handwritten ledgers.

If you think closely about it, the commercial banks are probably the most modernized sector in Guyana. They’re sleek, digitized, and irritatingly efficient. You can pay bills online, transfer funds to your cousin in Essequibo electronically while sitting in your hammock, check balances without ever seeing a teller, and make withdrawals at an ATM. Today you can deposit cash without a human being present—just slip it into a machine, and voilà! Your account magically fattens.

Meanwhile, the government still operates as if it is in the 20th century. Passport renewal. Forget it. You can’t apply online. You can’t even download a proper editable form. You must print it out, find a functioning pen, and then drag yourself to the Passport Office, where the line begins in 2025 and ends in 2030.

And yet, there was the President, gravely discussing with the banks about modernization. As if the Ministry of Finance has already perfected teleportation and is generously offering pointers. Without the banks, let’s be honest, the government would still be paying its employees by cheque. Cheques! Remember those? They’re the Stone Age equivalent of electronic transfer, complete with ink smudges and the possibility of bouncing. The only reason public servants get their salaries electronically is because the banks long ago decided the quill pen had served its purpose.

It’s amusing and tragic, that the Prime Minister of India once visited Guyana and generously offered his country’s help in setting up a system that would see every citizen be given an electronic account. This was financial inclusion at the click of a mouse. That was a few years ago. The government nodded politely, clapped, and promptly filed the suggestion in that dusty drawer marked “Brilliant Ideas We Will Never Implement.”

Instead, we still have thousands of Guyanese who have never used an ATM card, who struggle to sign their own names, and who view technology with the same suspicion that medieval villagers reserved for witchcraft.

This is why bank lines are still so long. People prefer to stand in a queue for three hours, sweating profusely, just to withdraw $10,000, rather than touch a screen that might, heaven forbid, talk back. And no matter how many times the banks advertise their “easy online transfer services,” you still see folks clutching paper bankbooks.

So really, if there’s any institution in need of modernization, it isn’t the banking sector. It’s the government itself. The public service, in particular, could use a thorough scrubbing. Electronic document management? Please. Half the ministries don’t even answer emails. Online applications? Only if by “online” you mean “download this PDF, print it, fill it out in triplicate, and bring it to the ministry where you’ll be told to get it notarized by your second cousin.”

What the President should have done, if he were serious about financial modernization, is to pass a law mandating that all businesses accept electronic payments. Debit cards, credit cards, mobile wallets—the works. Imagine the boost in efficiency, the elimination of cash-handling headaches, the reduction in petty theft. But of course, if he dares, the bourgeois class—the same respectable gentlemen who bankroll his party—would be the first to rebel. They love cash. Cash is flexible, cash is discreet, and cash doesn’t leave an audit trail.

So instead, we get the President calling in the banks for a boardroom chat about modernization, as though he’s the benevolent father teaching them how to walk. Meanwhile, the banks are already running marathons, sprinting past the government’s snail-paced bureaucracy.

I don’t want to be unkind, but the spectacle reminds me of a man standing at the foot of a skyscraper, instructing the architects on how to use bricks. “Have you considered concrete?” he asks, while holding a hammer and chisel. The architects, too polite to laugh, nod solemnly and say, “Thank you, Sir. We’ll take it under advisement.”

The problem is not that the banks are behind. The problem is that too many Guyanese are unwilling or unable to keep up. Financial literacy is still low, trust in technology is even lower, and the government, instead of leading, is panting breathlessly behind, calling on the banks to wait up.

So, the next time the President feels the urge to hold such a meeting, perhaps he might consider the alternative: asking the banks how they could help modernize the public service. Because if we’re honest, that’s where modernization is still desperately waiting to happen.

(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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• comedy, commercial banking sector, commercial banks, modernize, Peeping Tom

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