Each time a minister dabbles

Sep 28, 2025 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – I put the simplest of hypotheticals before fellow Guyanese, especially the thinking ones, the ones with a compassionate compass.  Some may see the hypothetical, while others what is beyond ordinary; projects the extraordinary.

On each occasion that a minister of the government, (PPP, PNC, AFC, WIN et al) pockets a million Guyana dollars, think of the ripple effect of that flashy action.  It doesn’t matter whether past government, new government, or government of the future, because the scenario, the formula, stays the same.  So, what happens when one minister hugs a million dollars?

A million is a thousand thousands.  So, when a minister snares a million, what he or she has just done is to deprive one poor Guyanese family of one meal for approx. three years.  When I say poor, I mean poor, as in dirt poor: barefoot, seat-of-the-pants (patched) dragging poor.  With the permission of readers, I am using $1,000 as the baseline for a basic meal.  Two pints rice. One-pint split peas.  Quarter pint oil.  One onion.  One piece firewood.  Quarter pint kerosene.  Call it ‘shine rice’ or veggie rice, or kitree; but it is ground zero basic.  A thousand dollar should cover those ingredients, provide a Guyanese family of four, with a li’l bambai left back.

Now there are two ways to look at that million dollars that disappeared into the capacious folds of a minister’s suit pocket.  One family is shorted of one meal daily for three years, give or take.  Or, 1000 Guyanese families are starved of a meal for one day, because a minister was more into self-help than helping the poor in Guyana.  From now on, the road gets longer and stickier.  Trickier, too.

What is the damage done, when a minister lifts $100 million dollars?  By the way, $100 million is chickenfeed money, when the scale of special circumstances and special arrangements in Oil Guyana is considered.  I could make the argument that there isn’t a single minister alive today, who is not a Guyanese billionaire.  I don’t.  Though I just presented the definition of what is euphemistically labeled “unexplained wealth.”  But back to the issue of when $100 million attracts a minister.  It means that 100,000 Guyanese families, those that the World Bank identified as existing on $1100 a day, just lost out on one meal for one day.  It’s time for the $64,000 question (two of them, in fact) and remember that this is not an American Gameshow, but the horror show that is a tragic daily affair in Guyana for too many Guyanese.  Think minimum wage earners in both the private and public sectors in Guyana for a start.

What’s the result when a dozen, or two dozen, ministers are busy commandeering first a million dollars, then a hundred million each, which may be so regular as to be routine?  It is a consideration, a blow, that staggers the mind, doesn’t it?  Now, extend that to the supporting cast.  Think of senior public servants who are also intimately woven into the fun and festivities, who number not in the dozens, but in the hundreds.  Suddenly, the sum of what is taking place is not an abstraction, is not bloodless nor painless, is not some remote cyberspace soap opera.  A million, a hundred million, a billion, then several of the latter, represents a huge punch in the throat that travels to the stomach.  Who don’t have enough to eat, suddenly find that they can’t breathe deep enough.  When budgets have been one hit record after another, then it shouldn’t surprise that the dancing has been nonstop.  The excited players come up with new moves, find new grooves to explore and exploit.

So, whenever one minister, or 21 of them, picks up a million (or a hundred), the truth of the matter is no longer limited to disagreements of too much emphasis on too much sand and stone and cement and seashells for ornamentation.  The raw reality is of the human drama that unfolds in dreary day following drudgery-filled day in Guyana.  It involves poor citizens crying out to the heavens about why they are getting battered by a two-by-four across the nose on a 24/7 basis.  They can’t see, they can’t hear, they can’t smell.  And, worst of all, because of those hard, unrelenting, and remorseless blows, they have lost their taste for food.

So, the next time that a minister looks richer than Gautam Advani, or more dazzling than Elizabeth Taylor and Priyanka Chopra together, remember this little hypothetical that reaches high and travels far.  A minister with a million is a marvel.  With a hundred million, there’s a miracle minister.  On the minus side of such richness, stand the swaths of hungry Guyanese that were sacrificed to enrich the multimillion dollar labors of many ministers, public servants.

(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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• AFC, GHK Lall, Minister, PNC, PPP, win

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