Maybe Guyana will forever defy the foundations of scientific life

OCTOBER 26, 2015 | BY KNEWS | FILED UNDER FEATURES / COLUMNISTS, FREDDIE KISSOON

Humans refer to science as a deterministic process. You learn that in high school. If you stay downstairs and ask your sibling to throw a hundred dollar bill for you to give to the homeless man at the traffic stop, chances are that it may blow out of the yard. It is called the law of gravity. Archimedes ran out of his bath tub shouting “eureka! Eureka”! He discovered an important scientific law – the principle of flotation. Time follows scientific pathways too. If a worker takes ten hours to sew a dress, she is not going to take ten hours to sew ten dresses. That is not scientifically possible. If a headmaster has to mark ten papers no matter how long he takes it will entail a longer time if he has to mark a hundred scripts. Only in Guyana this defiance of science takes place. It is one, if not the most macabre motions in Guyana. Look at any census in Guyana the past twenty years and it will show we were and are never near the 900,000 figure. Then you have to factor in the age differential. Let us put our population at 800,000. A large percent of that number relates to babies and small children who do not apply for land titles, driver’s licences, NIS pension, tax identification number etc. Yet with such a small population, those documents mentioned above takes months and months to get. I went to a large university that when compared to the University of Guyana makes this country a nightmare that does not belong to the civilized world. I was one of 40,000 students at the University of Toronto. Each month I went to a window, gave my name and student number and my scholarship cheque was there. I picked it up literally in seconds. That will never ever happen at the University of Guyana even in the next hundred years. Guyana is as terrible as that. You go to a window at the University of Toronto give your name and number and your grade slip is given to you in minutes. At the University of Guyana which has 4,300 students, it takes literally months to get your transcript. A requested transcript to be forwarded to another university abroad takes months thereby frustrating the student’s admission into that foreign institution. As a matter of policy new staff members are paid their first salary there months after taking up the appointment. This is at a university where total staff and students never exceeded 5200 How many drivers does this country of a population just over 800,000 have to cause an application for a renewed driver’s licence to take literally five hours just to submit the application because of the long line? The renewed licence is made available two weeks later. This country with a tiny population carries you through one full working day to clear a vehicle from the wharf. It then takes another full day the next day to get the relevant certification from the GRA. Think of the uncivilized breakdown if this country had a population of three million. Life would become like a science fiction movie if we had five million people. What is bizarre is this defiance of science. Out of a population of 800,000, how many cars a day can people clear on each of the wharves of this country that only one person could be served for the entire day? The paper work for my previous cars including my present one took up most of the day on the wharves where I went to uplift them. How many persons do we have in Guyana that would cause a birth certificate applicant to have to wait five months? How many persons are there in this very poor country own large agricultural tracts of land that to get ownership documents it takes almost half a year or longer? It takes four days to clear a cheque at any bank. My daughter, wife and I went to renew our ATM cards at Republic Bank. The applicant in front of us took one hour to complete his transaction. When it was our turn, we were told the paper work has to be done as if we were making an official application. Those behind us in the line went berserk. What is the answer? I believe that this country has been paralyzed in its very soul. It cannot move out of its morass. With all academic seriousness, I think there cannot be a sociological or administrative or management explanation for this defiance of science. The answer lies in psychology. It may go on forever.