Dear Editor,
I read a letter in your newspaper from Nishard Williams and I think this person should do some investigating before criticizing the government. First of all it is not this government that made Guyanese start to leave in droves from Guyana. It was the previous PNC government.
They had run the country into the ground and Guyanese of all races were getting out any way possible.
As for corruption Nishard spoke of, blame it on the previous government also. Corruption was turned into a fine art by the PNC. At that time you had to bribe public employees to do their jobs. Let me give you some examples. If you want a birth certificate or passport or had to deal with customs, you certainly had to know someone that worked in those departments there or else be prepared to pay up. I know some people that worked in those departments that got very wealthy.
I had applied for a passport and after six months I was told to come back month after month. I observed Chinese nationals were getting Guyanese passports and some of these people could not even speak English.
All this while the ordinary Guyanese could not get their own country’s passport. And there was nobody you could complain to. I remember I got so frustrated I went to the Stabroek News office to tell them about the corruption with the Chinese Nationals. All I got was a tongue lashing from the lady who interviewed me. She wanted to know what proof I had that corruption was taking place at the passport office. I told her to just go and see for herself and see how many Chinese people were getting Guyanese passports.
Nishard talks about jobs being given to party members and no respect being given to people with education. What did Nishard think happened in the PNC days? People were put into positions where they had no business being there. As for putting food on the table maybe Nishard Williams did not live through the days when Forbes Burnham was banning all imported foodstuff. A humorous incident happened that I remember very well during those “Bannam” days. A group of WRSM women coming back from Berbice were stopped at a checkpoint and caught with bags of wheat flour.
I left in 1991 and went back in 2002 and every year since then I am impressed with what I see compared with what I had left.
Yours faithfully,
Nohar Singh
