People matter most
Ian on Sunday
One man is running a company with the help of three old family retainers, two others who haven't had a new idea in a couple of generations, and a whole raft of school drop-outs. He is given a hundred million dollars. Another man is running a company with the help of a couple of argumentative but energetic and innovative assistants and three or four bright young graduates. He is given a million dollars. In five years' time who do you think will be at the head of the larger, more successful company? Nothing worthwhile can be achieved without the right people. Problems are solved by people not millions of dollars. In the wrong hands the shiniest new machinery is like a load of old scrap. All these sayings are cliches but the essence of a cliche is that its truth has become hackneyed through repeatedly proved application. No National Development Plan however beautifully formulated, however well funded, and however persuasively presented has a chance of success without the people to implement it. The National Development Strategy is currently being redrafted by groups of excellently qualified Guyanese with no partisan axes to grind. We must all hope that the nation as a whole can reach consensus on and rally around the strategy they produce at just about the same time as the nation as a whole rallies around a new Constitution. However, the greatest danger we will continue to face is that not enough of the right people in the right positions will be available to give any development plan life and meaning. However brilliant the accompanying rhetoric, it will clap no roti if the people aren't there. The danger takes three forms. The first danger is contained in the astonishing and deadly exodus of people out of the country. This country is still being inexorably depopulated. I wish absolutely accurate figures could be made available but, even in their absence, who can doubt that the exodus, if illegal is added to legitimate, is still running at as much as 20,000 people a year. These include many of the best, most skilled, most experienced, and hardest-working people in the community. I cannot understand why this threat to the whole nation is not more discussed in public, and with greater concern, especially as the exodus on the face of it seems likely to grow as the numbers abroad who can sponsor those at home goes on increasing. A couple emigrating a few years ago opens the way for a dozen more up the road. Remember also the devastating fact that people planning to leave have already left in the sense that they have lost all feeling of commitment and wanting to work hard and contribute as they coast towards the Promised Land. The cumulative loss of commitment insidiously slackens the sinews of effort in the nation. Secondly, there is the danger that the skilled, qualified, and industrious people who do remain will increasingly be drawn off from productive and socially useful work into the get-rich-quick economy. This has been happening for a long, long time and will go on happening unless ways are found to reward useful and legitimate work at a much higher level than at present. This is one of the greatest challenges facing the nation. Thirdly, there is the danger that those who, despite every temptation and every family pressure, do stay in the country and do remain in productive, socially useful work, will nevertheless transfer their services from the public sector (where they are desperately needed to run utilities, essential institutions such as hospitals and schools, Ministries, and the largest economic entities in the nation) to the private sector where the pay and perquisites tend to be much more attractive. This will certainly happen if public remuneration is strictly controlled and private pay goes free. The only solution then will be to privatise absolutely everything except the bare bones of general Governmental administration. It is this tripartite danger - exodus out of the country, exodus into the get-rich-quick economy, and exodus out of the public sector - that is by far the biggest threat to real economic progress in the next few years. It is a triple-bladed sword of Damocles hanging over all our heads. It cannot be ignored. I continue to be surprised how well the phrase used by Sir Jock Campbell, Booker Chairman at the time, is remembered and still so frequently quoted: "People are more important than ships, shops and sugar estates". He said that in a speech opening the then rehabilitated La Penitence Wharf long years ago. It made sense then. It makes sense now, except we might rather heavy-handedly adapt it to say: "People are more important than strategies and plans." A less snappy phrase perhaps but as true in its own way as Sir Jock's original words ever were. 
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