Memory is often not the best storehouse for trivial information – it’s an arbitrary process which often excludes something that turns out to be important – so I have developed this habit of jotting down, on a notebook or my computer, transient thoughts or reactions on a range of subjects. Here are some recent topics under the heading of ‘Practices We Should Abandon.’
In a recent note in my scribbling, I wrote that it’s time to stop this archaic practice in Guyana of putting Post Office stamps on receipts. To watch this ritual being carried out is to confirm how firmly we have both feet anchored in a form of backwardness. When one considers the time taken up by persons delivering this ritual, it is clearly a waste of labour besides being a drain on the patience of both parties. Furthermore, consider the impact of this banality on the persons who are required to affix the stamps. Imagine someone admitting, “Part of my job is to put stamps on receipts.” We should leave that relic behind, as we should also the ancient practice of the handwritten receipts themselves, laboriously made out by hand, with the obligatory carbon-paper copy, and, still seen far too often, the final embarrassment of a ruler being used to tear off the receipt. Imagine also the horror of having to keep those receipts books (what does the law require – 5 years?). Just picture the thousands of square feet of dusty cluttered space in this country holding old receipt books when all that information can be stored digitally on a chip you can hold in your hand. What happens to all these thousands of receipt documents anyway? In what cavernous vault are such things stored, and at what cost, and to what end? Perhaps, the biggest joke is that they are not kept at all.
Another aggravation is the matter of banks in Guyana refusing to change a US$ bill into smaller denominations. In today’s business environment, where US notes are in common use worldwide, why, for instance, can I not change my US$20 into four US$5 bills? I can understand the concerns about laundering money that would kick in if someone shows up with thousands, but what could possibly be the objection to the transaction involving a single bill? The bank is losing nothing on the transaction; maybe the problem is that they are not making any profit on it. It sounds very much like a ruling that is part of our former history; we should leave it behind.
This next one is something I’ve seen complaints raised on before, but I’m here to repeat it: Guyanese returning here to live are allowed to bring in household items, and a vehicle, duty-free, and it’s a complex system, one piece being that they are still required to go through the process of determining what duty they would have paid if they were not exempt. Why is that? If the information is needed for government’s year-end financial data, it could be calculated very quickly by one of the several officers in the tax-exemption process (some fees still have to be paid), but don’t add it to the list of several doors the returning applicant has to go through. I can attest that the GRA staff are very helpful in such exchanges, but we should take that ‘calculation-of-tax-you-should-have-paid’ off the very hectic table for the returnee.
In whatever country it inhabits, politics is a particularly rigid creature, rife with polarization, but it would be a relief – once we got over the shock, that is – to see an end to our politicians here castigating one other in the manner we are seeing of late. It is a flood of invective that indicates closed minds and intransigence, and many prominent persons are so infected. A difference of opinion is one thing, but when the position moves into one of personal attacks and malignancies it shows that, apart from the lack of manners and of civilized exchange displayed, the persons delivering these things are also unwittingly revealing much that is crass about them. Worse yet, and a sad reflection on our society, is that the invective continues when one encounters such persons socially. We can avoid reading the reports (as I do as soon as I see where it’s heading), or avoid such persons when we end up in the same public space (which I also do) but that has no effect on the practice. Tomorrow morning, or that very night in a broadcast, they’re at it again. Our leading politicians need to come down to the parapet and get off the castigation train.
Somewhat in the same category is the inclination by some of our leading figures and minds to make what are simply silly statements. Just recently, for example, we have one of the leading voices in our government reportedly saying that the political party currently in power (in effect, the one holding administrative control) “plays no role in the prosecution of criminal matters.” In the real world, that is a ludicrous assertion, and in the same week it was made, a private person, equally ludicrously, speaking on the subject of reparations for slavery, said that the Europeans started the slave trade and “bought and sold Africans for beads and mirrors.” Particularly because there are people in our society who will embrace such comments, the brighter minds among us must avoid proclaiming such nonsense.
In the midst of compiling the above complaints, however, I must admit that two of the things on my “to fix” list are now being attended to. One, I just noticed, is the announcement that Guyanese will soon be sporting a driver’s licence in the plastic-card format complete with bar code. I clearly recall my embarrassment in Miami four years ago presenting my Guyana licence at Budget car rental; the lady turned it over slowly, wide-eyed, as if concerned that the thing might bite her. It’s a relief to know we’re moving up. Another good moment arrived today (Friday) in Kingston where I noticed a long trench running from the Police Eve Leary compound all the week to High Street, and (here’s the astonishing part) unlike the rest of the city, the water in the trench was moving and moving rapidly; rapidly enough for a small boys’ toy-boat race. That told me that something is finally going right in the system of drainage in Georgetown; another item on my list.
Okay, I hear you: I want too many things fixed. Be realistic. Pick one off the list. In that case, just fix the stamps and carbon-paper receipts bit; let’s get rid of that first. Here’s why: in showing how backward we are, that one takes the cake.
