One of my earliest awareness moments upon my return to live in Guyana (I have mentioned it before) took place in a visit to a major hardware store in Georgetown in search of some half-inch bolts to secure the posts of a wood fence. I was able to find the bolts six inches long that I needed but the bin holding the nuts was empty. The sales person calmly told me, “We have none” and was unable to tell me when new supplies would arrive. Taken aback by this information, I said to the young lady, “Without the nut to hold it, the bolt is useless.” Her response was an embarrassed smile and a shrug.
The experience in Guyana reminded me of the time in Toronto when a Guyanese friend of mine who worked at Canadian Tire, the hardware store, took me into the company’s warehouse showing me the stocking process involved in procuring items. It started with a customer’s request for a part, with that person’s address and phone number and, if the part was out of stock, an automatic resupply request from within the company. It was an introduction in a small way to the systems operating in successful businesses where the various arms of the company were integers in a web of actions producing the result of a successful venture. Sales, maintenance of stock, pricing, customer contact, product appraisal, product additions, all interacted with each other, not just when a problem arose, but as a matter of course, thereby, in fact, preventing the problems from arising.
Although it was early in my return, the hardware store experience here, which I later found repeated in different ways across the society, soon made clear what I have come to see as a significant problem for life in Guyana – the dire lack of fundamental systems for efficient operation in so many of our private businesses and public agencies. It is a lack that is frankly crippling for both sectors, and if one takes the time to look behind some of the debacles before us in the daily news, it is very soon evident that in so many cases that absence is in play.
I sat this week in a Biodiversity Conference at the Arthur Chung Convention Centre, which included the subject of mining, hearing some specialist opinions on dealing with the various problems in the sector. As the occasion wound down, in the comments part of the meeting, a female miner took the microphone and in a calm and deliberate exchange pointed to the difficulties, from the miner’s side. Particularly evident for me in her recitation was that mining in Guyana is suffering from the same lack of systems that is found across our economy. The lady’s remarks immediately identified critical gaps in fundamental communication of information between government and private sector, basic provision of printed forms and rules, changes in official or regulatory personnel, research and design ideas, market trends, etc. In brief, standard systems of operation, inherently in place in successful businesses, were missing here and consequently creating problems for both the regulatory agencies and the miners in their work. Without being caustic – I don’t recall her even raising her voice – she painted a picture that was clear and direct.
Not two hours out of the meeting I read a letter in the newspaper by Sherwood Lowe asking “What should local government and constituency politics look like in Guyana?” I’m quoting the writer here because the point is manifest. “Years ago, I spent time at Guyanese friends in a small community in Pennsylvania, USA. In the few days I was there, my hosts received an invitation to a community meeting, several reminders by flyers and emails of various events (such as a Bingo), and a copy of the community newsletter. The newsletter (which I have since kept as a souvenir) includes information on proposed bylaw changes, events at the community centre, a youth fishing derby, work done by the maintenance department, and the biographies of candidates seeking to fill vacancies on the local council. What was striking about the approach of this community council in Pennsylvania was the high frequency of engagement with residents to both inform and involve them. This is the model we should follow in Guyana. Getting there, of course, requires not only a national plan but a cultural and political reboot.”
It was if Sherwood Lowe’s comments were crafted specifically for the hardware store I had visited, and for those listening, from government and private sector, regarding mining. And it didn’t end there. That same day, in the early evening, there was a talk at Moray House by businessman Beni Sankar on our rice industry, and once again, to venture beyond the points Mr Sankar was making, was to find another example of absent systems crippling an industry and causing hardship for those involved in it.
It is not as if this absence has just come to light. As persons such as Major Gen Joe Singh pointed out in the comments period at Moray House, most of our government institutions and businesses operate on the ‘silo’ model where units operate separately from each other; as a consequence, fundamental and even critical attentions are not in place. That was the essential point from the mining lady’s commentary. Joe Singh later spoke of a study done years ago in water control and drainage in Guyana, at Block 22, Region 10, which determined areas of highest water flow from the inland and recommended soakaways in those areas, a total of 104, which would trap sediments and allow the water to be naturally absorbed in the earth rather than creating floods. A systematic approach would then have established maintenance of the soakaways to clear away the trapped sediments and leaf material, but none was done for two decades. As a result, soakaways became blocked, and people living in the areas ended up with flooded yards, but Joe Singh went on to say that recent clearing of the soakaways has solved the flooding problem for those communities.
Joe Singh’s point and Sherwood Lowe’s admonition dovetail. There is a proven successful model of interlocking integrated systems that equates with business success, and we have to transform the way we organise and operate ours, public and private, if we are to progress. Some businesses – Farfan & Mendes; Spads Water; DDL – are already there, but they are the exceptions. The widespread and long-existing ‘silo’ mentality that Joe Singh refers to must be abandoned. Talk about development without such a transformation is meaningless noise.
