It is difficult to dismiss the advent of a distinct sense that Guyana is now entering into a decisive ‘zone’ insofar as the COVID-19 pandemic is concerned. Public pronouncements and official ‘warnings’ have suddenly assumed a greater air of official assertiveness and yesterday, Easter Monday, one got a distinct impression that the authorities were determined to ensure that the customary disregard for the protocols associated with public gatherings were enforced more rigorously than has been the case up until now.
What we will say, however – and it is simply a matter of calling a spade a spade – is, first, that our local Business Support Organisations (BSO’s) have not, since the advent of COVID-19 and its attendant state-implemented protocols demonstrated any serious sense of keenness about standing behind those protocols. There has been no persistent and boisterous sounding of voices on the matter of respecting the protocols. Up until now they could have done more and in a sense, one can argue that it is the indifference of the BSO’s which, to a large extent, has given rise to the fairly popular public view that it is making money now rather than seeking to protect the longer-term well-being of the country that has been the priority.
It may not do the national image any good at all to state that the posture of the local private sector organisations in the matter of the effective adherence to the COVID-19 protocols are a far cry from the posture of BSO’s even in some neighbouring countries, but the facts are what they are and perhaps the best hope of any kind of positive change reposes in stating what those facts are.
Previous editorials have already addressed themselves to the manner in which the Barbados government, working in tandem with the private sector has been able to successfully get business houses to comply with the COVID-19 protocols. But it is not only in Barbados that we have seen evidence of public/private sector cooperation at work to enforce the COVID-19 protocols.
It may be recalled that back in March last year, when our own private sector was operating in what was more-or-less an environment of cluelessness in relation to what they appeared to see as nothing beyond a loss of income occasioned by threatened business closures, the Private Sector Organization of Jamaica (PSOJ) was committing J$150 million to the national COVID-19 response. That could only have happened in circumstances where, first, the PSOJ and its members had themselves been seized of the urgency/seriousness of the situation and if they were willing, from the ‘get go,’ to pitch in with the authorities in the fight against the pandemic. Interestingly, as was reported in the Jamaica Gleaner, funding by the PSOJ targeted the “purchase (of) ventilators for hospitals that (had) been selected by the Ministry of Health and Wellness (MOHW) to handle people infected with the virus”. This suggested, surely, that the Jamaican private sector was concerned with inserting itself and its effort into being part of a national effort (rather than simply a business sector effort) to tackle the pandemic.
A year to the day after the PSOJ had publicly announced the throwing of its weight behind the state-implemented strictures we find the private sector leaders calling for an even more rigid enforcement of the COVID-19 protocols. Several days ago we saw the PSOJ calling for additional restrictions to add to what they were describing as the already “soft” or “partial” lockdown of few weekends ago. The Jamaican private sector, as a whole, went further, asserting that it was prepared to pay the price that businesses will have to pay, a price which is asserts is small compared to the longer term loss of life and loss to the economy in the long term.
It is probably fair to say that what would certainly appear to be the contrasting positions of the private sectors of Jamaica and Guyana in the matter of their respective experiences with the pandemic may well have impacted their seemingly altogether differing postures on the application of COVID-19 strictures. Whereas the impact of the pandemic on the business community, particularly wholesale and retail trading, manufacturing and farming and agro-processing has resulted in what we hope will end up being largely limited job losses over relatively short periods, the circumstances in Jamaica have been altogether different. The impact of the pandemic on the critical tourism industry has resonated across the entire country. More than that, the impact of job displacement in Jamaica will almost certainly be felt long after the circumstances in Guyana would almost certainly have returned to a condition of near normalcy.
One makes these observations not so much to ‘pick on’ our own private sector but to make the point that there is a need to understand that the entirely justifiable immediate-term preoccupation with ensuring that the ship of commerce remains afloat cannot be allowed to create a tunnel vision that subsumes the broader well-being of the nation beneath (as we say in Guyana) ‘mekkin a dollar.’
Our BSO’s are no more or less integral to our fight to push back COVID-19 than any other group, including government. In the circumstances we fail to see how, as a country, we can be seen as demonstrating a collective commitment to doing as best we can to fend off the frightening menace that we face when some institutions that ought to have a vested interest in winning ‘the war’ appear indifferent to enjoining the battle. Once again we are calling on the BSO’s’ to take a clear, definitive and unmistakable stand on the matter of a national response to COVID-19 and backing its position with robust and unmistakable public pronouncements to that effect. It must either make a choice or accept that its position will remain, at best, unclear and vulnerable to challenge.
