Dear Editor,
Insulting. Pitiful. Shocking. Those are some of the milder words I have heard used to describe the recent pay increase for public servants. Teachers found themselves lumped into that broad band of 54,000 Guyanese, and they are hopping mad. What to make of 6.5% in the Guyana that is of today? I scratch my head only to realize there is no hair left, so there is no relief from that source, such is the baldness and bawdiness of 6.5%. Thinking of 6.5% as a pay raise in a one or two resource country, and some level of satisfaction would come. The government is trying, has done its best.
But when I think of what and where Guyana is today, there is the chilliest reception to that 6.5% number. This single-digit public service pay raise is so thin, the odds are heavy that some smearing could greet the hand. See what I mean that this paltry sum means for public servants? It is filthy, and the PPP Government looks smelly, and is smelly, with the deformity of 6.5% that is so repulsive. To the senses. In the mere contemplation. In the hand as gathered and counted, and lamented. So little for so many. So few in a country so favoured. It is what is more than callousness, more than crookedness, more than craftiness and sickness; 6.5% is a combination of all four to the nth degree.
With Attorney General Anil Nandlall’s permission, I borrow a word from his practice: depraved indifference. And another: wanton disregard for anything and everything. To pilfer something from the Health Minister, Dr. Frank Anthony, 6.5% is a highly restrictive pay diet, the equivalent of putting public servants on a weightwatchers program. I have a slogan for President Ali and the PPP Government: eat less and live longer. It is what is being said to Guyana’s public servants. It is what is good for the arteries, and better for the digestive system. There is nothing healthier at this time of the year, and 6.5% is the icing on what just turned out to be the bleakest of cakes. To give it a seasonal musical flavor, I came up with Blue Christmas. My word, even Elvis Pressley couldn’t be more in his cups should someone dump 6.5% on his weeping heart.
Though Guyana doesn’t have any snow (none that I can see), this is going to be one hell of a whiteout Christmas for public servants. Right here in Georgetown and throughout Guyana, and not in Buffalo, New York. In pondering this 6.5% increase for public servants, I could not help but notice some cleverness at work. The President was wise enough, humble enough, and busy enough to give the honours of that 6.5% announcement to the robust looking Minister with some kind of responsibility for money. His robustness is a sign of good living, the kind of Guyana that all Guyanese should be enjoying, except for the Johnnie Walker Blue, and other imported food for the gods.
To this man of numbers, and a Guyana scholar, I have this little question: when is the last time anyone anywhere in the world spoke of 6.5% (or anything below 25%) in the context of the Guyana of these times? I shudder when I think of what scholarship has come to, the graveyard in which it has been so easily, gleefully buried. I am willing to make an excuse for the minister of money: he is so swamped with the demand of the times and his duties that he forgot to put a digit in front of that 6.5%. It is a one (1). At least. Guyanese could then dream of their own kind of creole Christmas, and actually think of how they would cope with the New Year on the calendar. In closing, I have a radical thought to share with my fellow Guyanese.
It has been said, I have, that Venezuela poses an existential threat to Guyana. This 6.5% abomination that is part of a continuum of such revulsions now gives me cause to revisit and revise that belief. I more than revise Venezuela as the source of an existential threat to the Guyanese people. The biggest existential threat to Guyanese, the worst of the worst of such threats, is the Government of Guyana. Whoever wants to fashion their noose and gather a lynching party has my cheery invitation to do so. Go ahead, make my day.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
