The signs have been clear since the first days of this administration: the privatisation of public services is a policy.
It is a path Guyana has been heading down for several decades as part of a laissez faire approach to governance, a reverence for free market capitalism and a tacit acknowledgment that successive administrations are plain incompetent at actually running stuff. Now it is being actively encouraged and we are seeing the full side effects of this approach in our everyday lives.
Let’s start with private education. Out of the 868 candidates who were awarded a place at the top five secondary schools, based on the National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) in 2023, 42% were from private schools. In other words, 369 children of parents who could not afford a private education were denied the opportunity of receiving the best secondary education Guyana can provide. This was actually hailed by Minister Manickchand as an improvement on past years. So it would appear that she acknowledges this is an unfair situation but seems either unwilling or powerless to actually do anything about it. Of course the answer is right in front of her face: Limit the number of places allowed to private students in proportion to their percentage (less than 10%) of the total taking the exam. This will discourage parents from gaming the system by paying for primary education in order to get the best free secondary schooling. One can’t blame them and their aspirations for their offspring but it does not mean as a society we should tolerate and indeed encourage such behaviour.
The overall effect of private schools on the public system has been pernicious, siphoning off hundreds of teachers and administrators. As a consequence Guyana has one of the worst public education systems in the Caribbean when once it was among the highest. Ignore all the bragging about the top students. Here’s one statistic on how bad it really is: Students in the hinterland had a pass rate at NGSA in 2023 of 37% in English and 18% in Maths. In comparison, private school pupils scored 94% in English and 79% in Maths.
Surely the PPP/C would have seen the disparities building over the years and would know how in this country and many others this contributes to long term class inequalities. Instead when it came into office it removed the corporation tax on private schools having already made cynical political capital from the coalition’s 2019 decision to place VAT on private school fees.
When it comes to healthcare, only last week we have seen how utterly broken the public system has become. We repeat the story of five-year-old Jai-Devi Gurdyal who died after receiving medication at West Demerara Hospital for asthma. Her mother said she had been treated there on several occasions for the condition without any ill effects. She died a little more than 24 hours later from what is suspected to be an overdose of magnesium sulphate – not antibiotics as the mother said the doctor had told her. To date we have not heard a word from the Minister of Health on this case nor on the disgraceful conditions at Skeldon. Does he care?
It was only a few months ago that President Ali opened a private hospital at Leonora declaring “We are not playing to be second best, we are playing for once in Guyana to be the best at what we want to do.” Sure enough a couple of weeks later a mother living on the West Coast took her asthmatic son to the Leonora Cottage Hospital. There was no suitable treatment or medication. So what did she do? She went to the shiny new hospital down the road and paid. It was the best she could do. Then there was the man who had just had a heart attack and because the equipment was broken at the Georgetown Public Hospital he had no other choice but to pay $1.5M at a private hospital for three stents. Without them he would have died like many other Guyanese – victims of this brave new pay-as-you-go healthcare system.
The President seems perfectly happy to use taxpayers’ money – a rather quaint term in this petrocracy – to pay private hospitals to clear the backlog of 5000 echocardiograms and ultrasounds (another dubious figure) rather than fixing the capacity of the public system. Kidney dialysis is already being outsourced to private facilities. It is clear what is going on here, the creation of a for profit American-style healthcare system with all the greed, corruption, cronyism and inequities that come along with it. We need no more evidence that this government is going in this direction than just as with education that one of its first actions when coming into office was to remove all corporate taxes from private hospitals. And while the President laments how nurses are being lured away by developed countries he is utterly silent on how many have gone to the private sector along with doctors and technicians.
In every aspect of this country, citizens are left to fend for themselves. Private security services and gated communities proliferate even as the police contend with a wave of lawlessness. The dismissive response by Minister Edghill when asked whether the government was considering public transportation says it all.
Do all Guyanese not have the right to the equal provision of education, health and security? It would appear not. Why not go further? Let’s encourage citizens to pay a premium for private fire services. “Not up to date with your payment? Sorry we will have to let your house burn”.
So much for inclusivity. What looms before us is a dollarised Darwinian dystopia. Everyone take your vitamins and hope for the best.
