Dear Editor,
I don’t know Patrick Fitzpatrick, but I know the technicalities of what he is talking about (SN, Sept 2), and I can therefore safely infer he is right. We are being ruled by ignorance and taxpayers’ money is wasted. The current spenders of our tax dollars seem to have hit upon a successful formula for getting away with it:
- They resist having a technical professional certification body like the Guyana Association of Professional Engineers (GAPE),
- so they can employ the compliant or young naïve academic (friend or family when possible) to oversee what they wish to do under the guise of youth empowerment.
- They then use the perfectly natural feelings of gratitude of the new employee in a high-paying job to accomplish their dreams of hanging on to power.
- Meanwhile the employee gets used to wielding his own power and starts to believe he is always right, not because the technicalities are right, but because those he chooses to associate with in buddy-buddy, bird-of-a-feather ignorance think so too.
This is only one aspect of how corruption breeds, but it is the one that hurts me the most as an educator. I like to see young people involved, but there is an order of achievement which must be adhered to, to stand the test of time and use our resources wisely.
All I can say is that Mr Fitzpatrick is tremendously brave to write this exposé and he has my gratitude. I am glad he only waited two weeks. It is courage like this that gives me hope for Guyana. He risks being marked down and marginalized from government contracts by the same people who have no intention of having a properly constituted and functioning Public Procurement Commission.
I must thank GHK Lall for his eloquent contributions. He is entirely credible to me, because I have had similar experiences with GWI addressing perfectly the things I did not complain about and holding up the achievement as evidence of their success in the things I did complain about. We will have to suffer them. But thank God we can choose who we will want to make progress and work with. His observation on the employment of PROs and such like excusers of incompetence in the public sector resonates with my own observations above. The response he got is generic to that of someone from under whom the rug of justified existence has been pulled.
My sympathy also goes out to Sahadeo Bates (who ‘Ended up in prison after reporting abuse,’ SN Sept 22) and his family. These are the kind of heroes that we must value if we still wish for a great country.
Yours faithfully,
Alfred Bhulai
