Dear Editor,
Guyana is a place where you can easily become over-qualified; ask those who have gone back to university how much of a difference obtaining a post-graduate or second degree has made in their lives. I am going to bet that more than half of them will tell you that they returned to the same job they had before, only less enthusiastic, and not a penny richer.
But why look at the post-graduate level when you have so many who have graduated with their bachelors or equivalent and could only obtain work in the clerical fields? I know of many graduates who work at the front desks of many financial institutions, the very job they would have started out with two or three years before entering university. What prevented them from advancing beyond just the bare ‘bread and butter’ stage of life?
Many would have heard the term ‘Mercedes-Benz dreams in a donkey-cart economy’. This adequately describes the life of the brightest among our youths; they tend to envision a fulfilling life in a country where we struggle to grapple with the most basic of problems, not least of which is a tense and overbearing political climate that stifles development, and which somehow suckles greed and corruption.
In Guyana, career-development opportunities are far and few between.
There is a very low ceiling that many young people can never hope of getting past; for them, there is no way but out. It is even tougher for those who are both experienced and qualified. In fact, the local environment can best be described as quasi-competitive, where copious elbow-grease, credibility and proven track records are of less value than the ‘strings’ and ‘lines’ that seem to be everywhere, and which cut across the path of the young, the experienced and the obviously talented, preventing them from reaching their ambitious goals.
However, none of what I have said in the foregoing is new; we have known about the issues surrounding ‘brain-drain’ since the post-war years. Many had then left for the ABC countries to be part of the economic boom that accompanied rebuilding after the end of hostilities, and which continued well into the 1960s.
For independent Guyana, the situation seemed to have only worsened over time, especially after ‘helping-out’ and nepotism became rampant. Our eminent economist Dr Clive Thomas, in quoting from an IDB report, noted that emigration of persons with tertiary qualifications had reached 89% in 2012 (Sunday Stabroek, August 10, 2014). Maybe it has crept up a little more since then!
Dr Thomas listed quite a few push and pull factors that contribute towards this runaway brain-drain. I stumbled upon one of the push factors that Dr Thomas did not include in his list, but which border on the ridiculous. During the past few years I have been a participant in several training programmes and lectures, at which the facilitators on a number of occasions would humorously state that despite the many qualifications that they had acquired, they still found it necessary to also obtain a certified driver’s licence for a taxi cab and/or a mini-bus. And some even proudly passed their licences around so that participants could know they were dead serious about what they were saying.
I took the time to ask one very seasoned and respected lecturer why he found it necessary to get a mini-bus licence.
He explained that Guyana being what it is, qualified and experienced people often tend to go against the grain when asked to give advice on things such as public issues. He further pointed out that Guyana has so many sacred cows and minions that you are bound to mash the corns of many persons in high office, when asked to give an academic’s position on an issue.
He even went so far as to explain the particular episode that prompted him to get his licence; he had been asked to make the obviously infeasible, doable on paper, and when he could not oblige the powers that be, he was given his marching orders.
And so when you have incurred the wrath of the many demi-gods we have, it becomes necessary to quietly pack up and go home.
That is when the mini-bus or taxi cab licence becomes useful. It can at least help put food on the table until you happen to land something with those whose corns you have not mashed as yet. Or until such time that you can pluck up enough courage to call it a day here in Guyana.
So if you are someone like me, who gets irritated by mini-bus and taxi drivers behaving crazily on the roads, let me encourage you to exercise a little patience. The errant driver might just be a former lecturer or a government advisor, out on hard luck!
Yours faithfully,
Khemraj Tulsie
