Dear Editor,
As one learns about events in the Cooperative Republic of Guyana, it is not surprising that rational people refer to, as I have before, a once popular newspaper theme “Believe it or Not”. One: in parliament those of us who are victims of Guyana Power and Light’s gross incompetence, or corruption, or the apparent journey of a silly spending spree, Guyanese take your pick. On Monday we heard from the most honourable Minister of Public Utilities and Aviation, Deodat Indar, defending the decision to award a management consultancy contract, to the value of US$15.6m, to a Dominican Republic company, via single-source procurement. Why, who, or when the decision was taken to by-pass the normal public tender board procedure is a big question.
Second: If the minister’s explanation makes sense, that the awardee has experience in fixing electricity delivery problems, them why are we paying many millions every month to an apparently bloated management structure of state-controlled GPL. In a previous correspondence I referred to our government’s proclivity of putting “square pegs, in round holes”, when will this stupidity be brought to an end?
Next: we were all excited, and congratulated the President for addressing the Belize parliament, that Belize and Guyana can ensure food security for the region. We are fond of asking people to apologize for their alleged misdeeds, when in the post-independence period efforts were made to wean people away from a total reliance on imported vegetables, fruit, and grain. The President must know how this effort was strongly criticized, even suggesting it was politically and racially motivated. In Belize our president may have learnt, why sugar production is not subsidised by the government, and therefore, a burden on taxpayers, as is the case in Guyana. The old folks say “easy lesson good for dunce”, let’s get some lucid answers to the above.
Finally, this is the problem with advancing age, I recall in the late 80s the Guyana dollar traded at US$1 to GY$10, with the vast revenues coming to us from oil, gold, timber, silver, manganese, marine products, the Guyana dollar is still between $210 to $220. Checking with the banks today, the buying rate was GY$218 to US$1. I confess, I don’t understand, could someone help.