Dear Editor,
Stabroek News has done 85 editions in its ‘Cost of Living’ series to date and is yet to interview someone willing to say they are doing better, juxtaposed to this sad series is the daily dose of envy from all quarters on social media platforms where Guyanese point out who is doing well, who is driving a new vehicle and who is wearing what; a typical example is PNC Attorney Darren Wade’s post today on FB “Spare a thought for me, after 7 years of studies and 9 years of practice I still have to wake up and grind whilst a man can wash government vehicles and receive 17 million dollars in 6 month.” (Sic) absent in all of this is an honest analysis of where Guyana is economically and where we are headed now.
Stabroek News can be forgiven for people never want to say they are doing well publicly, however, it serves no good purpose when an unrealistic picture of poverty and misery is portrayed by the same people who would be the first to claim they lost X amount of millions in sales/crops if there should be a slight flood etc. then there is the other side of the local coin, the envious, the self-righteous and the ignorant. Let’s take Darren Wade’s comment for example; the claim is that a business ‘washing government cars’ is earning about 3 million a month and, that for Wade is more than he earns as a lawyer, had Darren taken a few moments to do research and think before making his post, these factors may have changed his rush to judge 1. How many people are employed by the business? 2. What is the cost of detailing a vehicle inclusive of employee salaries, rental of premises, electricity, machinery, cleaning supplies, insurance, and, taxes? Then there are the intangibles such as the knot in the business owner’s stomach when employees do not come to work and when the government cheque is three months overdue. Still, the employees expect to be paid and, of course, the dreaded call from the bank… it is a case where the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence. Suppose the business owner were to reply to Darren Wade and say “If you were a better attorney you would be rolling in the dough instead of standing with a man who can’t do maths; Bruh, even if you made proper paper, that man can’t help you count it!” Point is, we can all criticize each other but we seemingly lack the empathy to take a walk in another’s shoes.
There are also daily gripes about ‘corruption’ with government contracts and indeed there are some strange awards from time to time, and some contracts are poorly executed to the point where the government is applying liquidated damages, however, think of what the government is trying to achieve by spreading work among the thousands of new contracting companies, they are giving the job to locals who are learning and Guyana is building capacity, most are delivering as expected and a small percentage are failing, the alternative is to give all the work to large foreign entities and forget about capacity building. In every conversation about roads for example, the Cemetery Road comes up, it is however, one of nearly four thousand road contracts given out since 2020, it is an important road and extensions have been granted, if the contractor fails to deliver, at some point liquidated damages will apply, but until then we have to give local companies some leeway to learn and deliver. What do we benefit if we give the Chinese all the contracts? Some patience and less envy would do us all good.
As to the cost of living, there have been numerous interventions by the government to mitigate the effects on the most vulnerable in our society, the rest of us have to hustle harder or smarter to gain a piece of the Guyana economic pie; it is down to individual mindsets, negative or positive is a choice; I choose positive and go with what 50 Cent sings “no other option get rich or die trying”
Sincerely
Robin Singh
