Will this country ever change for the better?
Freddie Kissoon column
Kaieteur News
December 7, 2006
I feel guilty whenever I do the type of column that will follow below in today's edition of KN. I feel bad about what I write because I know I have an avenue for my grievances and hundreds of thousands of other Guyanese do not. I can write about the wrongs that I see all around me. I can express myself in public about the wrongs committed against me. People know about what happened because they have read it in Kaieteur News. I thank Glenn Lall for this forum that he has provided me with.
But I haven't used the Freddie Kissoon Column all for myself. I have acted countless times as a conduit. I have published the violations committed against the poor and powerless in this country by the untouchables. I will continue to do so until I am removed from this newspaper or I leave the world. However, I do not have the resources to investigate all the complaints I receive. I am contacted on a daily basis by aggrieved Guyanese. But many of their complaints I cannot act on. First, my phone bill keeps mounting. Secondly, my gas bill will impoverish me if I continue with my energetic investigative journalism. Thirdly, a one-man organization is a scientific fiction. Fourthly, I have to legally protect myself and the newspaper I write for.
I know the transgressions are true in some cases, but how to prove them? You write about these ethical tragedies and if there is no evidence, I and the paper can be demolished in the courts, especially in a country where personalized relationships are ubiquitous.
Medical malpractice kills many Guyanese. I have knowledge of some sad cases but I need help to bring these to light. I do not feel a columnist and a newspaper can expose these things given the legal risks that are involved. I will pen a forthcoming column on medical malpractice.
When you write about Guyana as an abused country, you get some nasty reactions from those that are in charge. They inquire why you didn't write on a new bridge that was built. Why the troubles only are your focus all the time.
The answer to that is simple; people should live peaceful lives and not be brutalized by a social order that seems unchanging and regressing to primitive times.
When you write about the troubles, pains, violations, and the hurt innocent, poor people have to endure in a country where the government is insensitive, your hope is that the exposure may contribute in some invisible, in some tiny way, in bringing about changes.
Here are some examples of pain and hurt in a country that seems destined to be stagnant and lost. I have no apologies to make to anyone in this world about writing about the disastrous things that happen in this country. My attitude is shaped by the downright primitive aspects of this country. What is disheartening is that these problems are unnecessary. It is as if somewhere out there in the world someone has marked this country out for destruction.
Let's return to the examples. If there is anything this government should devote all its energies to, it is the crime situation. Guyana has a criminal sarcoma that is eating away at the flesh of the nation. We have one of the highest crime rates in the world and perhaps the highest numbers of unsolved murders.
On Saturday evening, I got a call that one of my colleagues at UG was lying on the UG Access Road after involvement in an accident.
When we went to the Georgetown Hospital, the police outpost there began to ask questions. The officer requested Sparendaam to send a traffic rank. But guess what? For half an hour the phone was busy. Sparendaam Police station has only two lines – a general one and one reserved for the officer in charge upstairs. The phone for the Sparendaam chief rang out. That was understandable. He can't be in the entire 24 hours. After making contact with Sparendaam, there was no available vehicle. I had to act as the chauffeur.
This is completely unacceptable. What if a rape and robbery was in progress at Industry or Ogle and neighbours were trying to ring in to Sparendaam? After all this country has gone through, you would think that police stations on the lower East Coast would have had their land-based lines increased and a fleet of available vehicles for each police outpost.
What excuse can a government have for allowing this pre-2002 situation to remain?
Before the crime monster started his action in 2002, Sparendaam and other police stations had one line each. Nothing has changed since then. To think that Guyanese went and voted back into power the very politicians that created this kind of situation.
We are four months away from hosting a major international sporting event yet look at our faulty social infrastructure. Didn't the “Sunset” legislation demand that police stations have adequate lines.
Finally, I called the GWI every day in last week to report a pipe in an unoccupied yard that was leaking. None of the phones listed in the telephone directory were being answered.
Guyana is the only country in the world in which the managing director of a major, monopoly utility service shares the same telephone line with the PRO. Vlissengen Road had two lines listed for them and both were perpetually engaged. Then when I did get through, a recorded voice asked me to hold for an operator, then said, “Sorry, no operator available, exiting the system.”
Three times in last week I had that identical experience. At one time a voice came on requesting that I leave a recorded message. I did. But one week after that, the pipe is still wasting thousands of gallons of water. GWI simply does not exist. Does Guyana exist?