After Fifty-seven years of Independence a huge array of simple straightforward processes from all ministries still presents the arduous,sisyphusian task to obtain simple documents. For instance, a menial task for the replacement of a National ID card, Death Certificate, Birth Certificate has become an exercise in mass clumsiness. The entire country has suffered from the passport application disease, while presently road accidents are at an all-time high with traffic pile-up causing thousands of man hours loss daily- continue to plague the land. Fire safety systems exist in the epoch of the Flintstones with primitive evacuation and warning systems (the cost for a smoke alarm/detector is US $10) This blundering format is dished out and served by the Ministry of Home Affairs thus the salient question: why this particular minister is still on the job? But this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Why would Education Minister Priya Manichand be the first minister to walk on the charred debris at Madhia? Under her tenure many fires took place: Mabaruma Secondary, Chase Academy, North Ruimveldt Secondary, St. George’s High, Church Christ Secondary and now theMahdia dormitory. While she bears no direct blame, in management, the buck stops at the Minister’s office. On August 31, 2008, a fire broke out in the girls’ dorm at Waramadong Secondary School. Three of the 12 students there at the time – Eleven-year-old Zanita Sam, 13-year-old Savylin David, and 13-year-old Sharmileza George, all of Kubenang, Upper Mazaruni in Region Seven (Cuyuni/Mazaruni) – perished in its wake. Her Ministry embraces a huge budget but serves a pittance in the plates of student safety.
Infrastructure works, which are almost always, invariably completed years behind schedule and infected with cost overruns are performed often with brother, brother-in-law, sister-in-law obtaining contracts. Airport repairs/ construction in in its twelfth year and closing in on US$200million; meanwhile Minister Edgehill travels to India to observe the maiden voyage of a transport ferry for the North-West.
The waiting period for a house lot exceeds 5 years in an 83,000 square miles land mass consisting of some 800,000 inhabitants. Bangladesh, on the other hand has 170 million people living on less than 58,000 squaremiles! Colin Croal and Susan Rodrigues should consult the Housing minister in such a country. They may learn a thing or two.
The President, when not airborne or rubbing shoulders with Middle East dictators, should evaluate his handiwork as the former Min. of Housing. Black tanks litter the landscape, houses suffer from poor designs and sun-standard workmanship and building materials, not to mention the cumbersome process to obtain any form of (bribe less) building permit.Personally, I think President Ali can do a better job if he employs true professionals instead of those anointed with PPP” Marxism and EXXON’s oil.
The Deeds Registry is shrouded in a litany of questionable process to obtain Title or Transport for properties; a waiting period of ten years has passed for many people I know personally. The absence of Real estate Regulations births fraud and mis-representation in the sale and purchase of properties. The Attorney General seems obsessed with worshipping EXXON rather than fix the huge administrative pitfalls of his ministry. People must recall that properties have been sold and recorded without the real owners knowledge !what a country where we have condemned the sins—not the sinners .
Most of Guyana’s ministers have never operates any business nor managed a dozen persons making their portfolios overwhelming for their pitiful brains. A comedy of errors in this and the previous government traverse the land of Many Waters where water is actually imported and food takes up almost all the wages of the working class . But then again Guyana is a land (80% of the population) with the highest concentration of millionaires in the world !
Leyland Chitlall Roopnaraine
Real Estate Builder, New York
