Dear Editor,
The recent piece about the Guyana Civil Service of the 1950s certainly brought back memories. Civil servants, particularly in the clerical grades, prided themselves on their efficiency in those days. Gaining a reputation as incompetent at your job was just as bad as being known as a dunce at school. It should be remembered that, on marriage, women were required to resign from their pensionable posts. If they had been in post for 7 years, they were entitled to a marriage gratuity – as far as I recall – of $G1,000.00 (a thousand dollars), a tidy sum in those days.
In the 1950s and 1960s Guyana’s ex-civil service employees from the colonial period enjoyed a very favourable reputation as clerks, typists and secretaries in London. They were hardworking, eager, reliable and prolific. It ought to be borne in mind that in those days the minimum entry requirement for the civil service was the Cambridge School Certificate and, thanks to Guyana’s sound primary education, the 3 Rs posed no problem for us. As secretaries, rarely did we have to consult a dictionary, which meant greater output at the end of the day. A local government officer once told me that he automati-cally placed job applications from Guyanese ex-civil servants at the top of his pile – they had a proven track record.
My huge pat-on-the-back came in the early ’70s, when I was asked to help with the highly confidential task of despatching to the firm’s 120 shareholders, Dividend Warrants and Notice and Agenda for the Annual General Meeting. The Company Secretary co-opted 2 of us for this task, which normally took a whole day. I volunteered to do it on my own, and employed the method I saw used by a CS messenger for bulk despatch. I simply lined up the envelopes in batches of about 6-8, flaps touching, in cascade fashion, brush painted the flaps with Gloy and quickly sealed them, using the side of a clenched fist. The others looked on for a while, completely fascinated. The job was completed in under an hour. Up until then, every year it had taken 2 people a full working day, at least, to fill the envelopes, lick the flaps, seal them shut and then sit on them in batches, to keep them sealed, in readiness for the postroom! My way was eventually adopted in other departments.
On the question of the withdrawal of ‘business’ from one newspaper by the government, it seems fair if readers stopped buying the state newspaper until ‘normal service is resumed.’
Yours faithfully,
Geralda Dennison
