Advanced technology in a country of blackouts

Dear Editor,
We are living in an age of advanced technology; an age of cell phones, television, internet, computers, ipods, DVD players and an unending list of modern inventions which baffle the intellect and confuse the mind. I can carry thousands of words and documents on my flashdrive, and a whole library on my laptop computer. I seem to have forgotten how to write a letter by hand since the invention of the computer and internet.

All these modern inventions I have listed here are of no use to me now because I am living in a country I call ‘an area of darkness,’ which is plagued by frequent blackouts every day. In the middle of preaching a sermon in my church with foreign guests, I am hit suddenly by a blackout, and members run helter skelter looking for a lamp or candles. My foreign guests are lost for words; they have now visited a nation one million years behind civilization.
In the midst of an accident the emergency ward at GPHC is hit by a sudden blackout; while visiting a government office in George-town having travelled all the way from Berbice for a very important document, a sudden blackout changes the day because the Berbician is told he cannot be helped because of a blackout. While driving from Berbice to Georgetown a sudden blackout hits the road creating a dark pit of hell because headlights cannot fully illuminate where the vehicles are going.

As residents depend on GWI for water once a day – or once a week in my case – we now have to depend on the mercy of the rains because a sudden power failure killed water in the pipelines. Yet water bills are climbing higher and higher. In the midst of students studying right now for the CXC exams, sudden power failures affect their studies. Stray cows, dogs, donkeys, horses, etc, roam the dark, potholed roads where there are few street lights; no wonder our accident rate is higher than that of most Caribbean countries.

In this age of modern technology we have fallen from grace like Lucifer, all because of bad administration.Yet many of our ministers in government are advocating tourism in Guyana – a land of thieves and robbers who can benefit now by invading our homes in the dark and rob us in the streets of Georgetown. While many are suffering in the dark with bottle lamps and cannot even afford kero for their lamps, many of our leaders’ homes are very bright all because they are well fortified with their own powerful generators. Many of those selling fish and meat in the markets are suffering thousands of dollars in losses because of Mr Blackout. The voltage fluctuation is creating millions of dollars in damage to computers, TVs, fridges, and washing machines, and in some cases even homes are burnt down. Who is compensating these people for their losses? Yet GPL bills are climbing a mountain every month and their disconnection teams are very active disconnecting power even though bills have been paid.

What have we really achieved after 43 years of independence? Under the British Guyana was better off and still would have been better off today. Our leaders have failed us. Many of our citizens are brutalized in Barbados, yet they don’t want to come back home? Why? It’s because they cannot find jobs and they are fed up with no water, no good housing and jobs that cannot pay. Our moral and social standards have now been reduced to the level of the donkey cart economy. Our citizens are leaving every day and our skilled people are running away. It’s all because of bad government, and we seem to be getting worse.

What we need is a national front, or an all-inclusive government where members of every party  work together along with NGOs and religious organizations to re-build and administer this nation. We need to pay our workers decent salaries so they will stay and work to build this country and not run away to another man’s country to build his. The money we earn in this country cannot feed us, clothe us and pay the bills, thus making it very difficult for the average worker to save money in the bank. The VAT is chasing more people out of Guyana. How can we tax our people 16% and raise their salary 6%? What kind of accounting is that?

A good government must have love and concern for every citizen in the country. In my travels to different nations, I have not seen blackouts and high crime rates like I see here. I have seen governments such as Suriname giving every child born a sum of money for their education every month, and even helping parents to find jobs and cheap housing. In Holland and many more nations around the world, parents are also helped by the government. Here I have seen the rich getting richer and the poor man going from bad to worse.
Yours faithfully,
Rev Gideon Cecil