Dear Editor,

Everywhere you turn in Guyana, advantage is being taken of our helpless citizens with little condemnation from those who are supposed to help. It’s no secret that lots of Guyanese depend heavily on relatives and friends overseas for assistance and that this has caused a lot of small shipping companies to be established here and charge less than the big shipping companies. However, from all indications it may be cheaper to use the big shipping companies.

When using one of the big companies to send a barrel, the receiver only pays the duties for whatever is in the barrel, but with some of the smaller companies you end up with an expense that is higher.  Editor, in some cases when your box/barrel reaches here via one of the small shipping companies, instead of you receiving a call from them you have to keep calling to find out if it has come long after the time given by them. When you go to uplift it, some of them will tell you that you have to pay storage although it is their fault. In some cases, before you receive your paperwork for the barrel/box you have to pay a “documentation fee” which varies from $2,500 upwards, often without getting any receipt, and this is the paper they are supposed to give to customs. Before you see your box/barrel, some of the porters would make an impressive show looking for it and would take a long time unless you offer a “top-up” ($1,000); if there’s more than one they claim that it must have “automatically” separated and that takes longer and the “top-up” increases. When you finally are ready to leave, the porter will ask someone to give you a hand because he has to do something, and that helper will now have to get something although the shipping company has guaranteed quality service to the sender overseas.

When you finally finish the expenses are often similar to whatever the cost is for the items shipped, and no one says anything about this exploitation of receivers.

Yours faithfully,
Sahadeo Bates