– Experiencing the frustrating New Amsterdam Hospital.
Vibrant and alive, this country hums with economic energy. We seem to be on the cusp of a great economic take-off.
We solved our housing crisis, and housing development is re-painting the landscape everywhere.
Yet, we have such a far way to go. Citizens seem to be leaping ahead, carving and forging their personal economic development out of social chaos, while Government lags far behind in an age of rigid inefficiency.
People across this land experience degrading, humiliating public service.
Were we to transform the relationship between the citizen and his or her Government, we would see less stress, a reduction in public aggravation and a happier citizenry.
At public hospitals and through the public education system, Guyanese feel helpless and unable to cope in their own country.
Citizens with the means, those able to pay their way through this State-run system of inefficiency, greed, corruption and poor management, get by quite easily.
But for the majority of Guyanese, encountering the New Amsterdam Hospital, the Georgetown Public Hospital or public schools evokes stress and mental aggravation.
Take the New Amsterdam Public Hospital, for example.
Last Monday, over a dozen families sat on stiff wooden benches waiting in suffering silence with worried expressions for word about their deceased loved ones, because the hospital did not conduct its scheduled post-mortem examinations.
Many of these Berbicians, as is the case across the land, lack the communication ability and presence of mind to handle bureaucrats and the draconian State machinery.
They sat there, pitiable souls, hoping for an answer to their plight. Those who could, sought out ways and means of paying their way through the stalled system.
One could only feel a sense of sympathy for our citizens. Why do our people have to be so humiliated and degraded, in their own town?
That morning, the hospital had scheduled over a dozen post-mortem examinations for bodies lying in the mortuary.
Families turned up in expectation of being able to carry on with funeral arrangements and so on. But our Government-run hospital does not consider such things as the expectations of its citizens.
So Berbicians turned up bright and early at 8 am, only to be told that the doctor scheduled to work would not be travelling to New Amsterdam from Georgetown. One report said an alternate doctor happened to be “on leave”.
This resulted in a crisis, with the general behaviour of the hospital callous and nonchalant. Staff expressed sincere regrets and sympathies, but no one offered the waiting families any comfort, alternative or reassurance. The only word was that post-mortem examinations would be done towards the end of the week, days away.
People expressed concern, as the New Amsterdam Hospital mortuary, despite its brand new makeover, fails to instill confidence in Berbicians that it is a place of efficiency.
People felt their loved ones would be affected by blackouts, as freezers would not work efficiently, and many questioned aloud if the back-up generators were even working.
The story a few months ago of a rat-bitten body at a state mortuary caused these waiting families worry and fear.
One could look at last Monday morning’s experience at the New Amsterdam Public Hospital as an anomaly. But not so. Sad and disgusting it is that this experience plays out at Government-run institutions across this land.
Until we solve how we govern this nation, our people will continue to face this excruciating oppressive weight dragging us into an aggravated existence.
One of the problems, of course, is that incredible illiteracy pervades the land. People cannot confront the failures of the system. Most people in this country, in a nation experiencing over 70 percent illiteracy, feel subjected to what they cannot understand.
Failing to comprehend these over-powering institutions, citizens resign themselves to things as they are, feeling it’s their bad luck or fate to suffer through such trauma.
What would it take to clean up the management of State-run institutions?
As much as the problem is two-pronged – the illiteracy and gross poverty of citizens using the system, and Government’s lack of competent State employees – the onus falls on Government to ensure that at least our health and education systems deliver the expectations of citizens.
Taxpayers fund these institutions to the tune of billions of dollars per year. We gave multi-million US dollars to questionable “contractors” to build the modern buildings for hospitals and schools. The least we would expect is some decency of service, some level of respect towards the citizen, the end-users of these services.
But the tragedy may be that not only the users of our public hospitals and schools are poor and suffer from low literacy skills, but many of the State employees, working for meagre State pay, also suffer poverty and lack of essential life skills.
These State employees want to join that national economic vibrancy: they dream of joining the mass hustle for thousand-dollar bills. They seek their place in the air-conditioned supermarket line.
So they turn to the users, the citizen desperate for service, to supply that “lil raise” to augment their poor pay. Desperate, citizens pay up. Those who cannot, suffer in silence, with their complaints falling on deaf ears.
Workers in the system see the desperate eyes of citizens encountering the State, and immediately see opportunity to exploit and get their share of that economic wheel, spinning so dizzying out there, outside the walls of the State.
At the altar of this economic drive, viciously exploitative in nature, we sacrifice our humane heart and sense of conscience.
