Dear Editor,
I kept silent while the EZjet story unfolded on one wing and some questionable representations. Now, the Guyanese public is once again victimized and taken for a ride by what appears to be another centipede-by-night operation. How many times will Guyanese travellers be held hostage by patently ramshackle entities? How many times will the government allow its friends to gouge citizens? Yeah, how many more times will these farces be allowed to disinter themselves and come again with new names and new schemes?
Whatever its name, and whomever its principals, the one plane operation has failed the paying public here on every occasion. This includes the state owned GAC from yesteryear. The facts support that some of these arrangements (and that’s what they are) are nothing but cover for a more lucrative transportation undertakings and as fronts seeking outlets. No one should need any enlightenment on this score. But that is another story for another day.
Today, I ask the government to do more to protect citizens by implementing real and serious due diligence on others who will appear when the turbulence from this latest fiasco subsides. It has done well with surety bonds and the like, which have proved to be helpful to the stranded and the suddenly out-of-pocket. I suggest more extensive details and public disclosure of principals; all of them who come out of nowhere to run a plane from New York to Georgetown. Some form of compressed prospectus should be made available for public scrutiny, as to the identity of investors along with abbreviated biographies. It is time to let the public know the hands in which they put their money. And their lives, too.
In addition, let there be no more of this absurdity of men progressing from involvement in restaurant and cake-shop equivalents to the demanding task of running an airline. There has to be a stop to the parade of front men and cronies. They are ludicrous on the face of things and worse yet when in action. I venture that if the unconnected were to signal a wish to run an airline in Guyana, they would be passed through mill and gauntlet several times, and then one more time for good measure. I believe that they would encounter every form of political and bureaucratic inquisition known to man. All that is asked is that the same stringent standards be applied to friends and fellow travellers.
Perhaps in this way, the Guyanese public can be saved from itself. And front men be pointed in other directions. May I suggest hydropower?
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
