Dear Editor,
Local content is the current rage. Guyanese should get more (I agree). Guyanese should be more admissible and visible and tangible. Again, I am all for all those rewarding things for the local population battling to get a fair share of the nation’s oil business. But Guyanese local content must be reliable, credible, and sustainable.
What follows is nothing in the abstract; or the comforting perfection of the drawing board; or the rhetorical fires that accompany times like these, when all and sundry pretend ignorance and manifest rank dishonesty.
The first thing that must be accomplished is for the suits and academics and all the others detached from Guyanese realities to get their feet in the viscous, sticky mud that is the real Guyana. There is much learning to do; perhaps, the commentators will be frank with themselves then, and with those whom they set up for a fall. They have not done so, though knowing very well that Guyanese local content is not ready for the challenges that must be overcome; or to deliver on a sustained basis the performance levels that must be an integral part of local offerings to a considerable degree. I repeat: not ready; not able to deliver.
Ask one businessperson (or a hundred) and it is same lament: workers not up to the job. Inquire of a million citizens and they have endless problems with businesspeople: quality, integrity, mere reliability. Question businesspeople about many other businesspeople and be prepared for the worst. Put the same questions and issues before government and it has severe problems with contractors and servants: quality of work, quality of effort, quality of partnership. I will stop here. But look closely, and it is a full circle, a huge national one that is aflame and inflames.
To be sure, there are a few honest and skilled and dedicated citizens. The problem is that they are way too few. It is easier to find oil nowadays than to find any of them. I will settle for a few good men (and women) only. Truth be told, the women are outrunning the men in the departments of messiness and ruthlessness, with respect to the wrong ways in going about things. Cut a corner, cut a deal, cut a figure. Foreigners are pushed to do more business with local people, when we ourselves have major reservations in even thinking about doing business with fellow citizens. Not doing; just the horror of thinking about it. That is speaking about us Guyanese only, who want to buy local, partner with locals.
Think about the builders and fabricators and constructors and helpers in any field and the experiences have been nightmarish. Daily, Guyanese spend hours on breakfast, breaks and lunch, along with more gaffing about what even they do not know. Very few hours are left to do actual work, deliver anything. Who should partner with them? Which policy is going to compel dealing with these monuments to the miseries that prevail? For the naysayers, check car or house or service provider. They don’t know what they are doing, to a large part. Worse yet, local content doesn’t care. Check public sector, then switch to private -same shabby story.
Contract with a business entity to get something done and, most of the time, there are delays, disputes, and sheer disgust. It is costly in time, in money, in crimes contemplated to set people and matters right. It is start and stop and start again. Then again.
Editor, I cringe at the thought of doing business with locals; I don’t trust them. And I mean this at many levels, be such individual or corporate. There are a great many, who share these harsh negative sentiments. I wish things were different; but they are not, and far from being so.
I am all for a robust, inclusive and meaningful local content policy. But give me something with which to work? Set asides are nice; protection percentages and all the rest can come to signify something and are urgently needed. But our people are not equipped mentally, ethically, or professionally to take advantage of whatever is embedded in any fair local content policy. They just can’t deliver. As I see it, the clamour for a vibrant local content policy is the beginning of creating a dependency society. It is the first step in a national welfare posture. I would argue that, in a broad-based vision, there is room for genuine involvements and contributions from Guyanese in the world to come; but not with these nationwide handicaps.
My concern is that locals will be unable to deliver, a burden to carry, and an embarrassment to keep under wraps. Bear in mind that I have not limited myself to the labourer and watercarriers; I have covered an arc that stretches all the way into the technical, the so-called professional, and the commercial, and with all the other places in between.
Thus, I think that the posturing about local content policy and participation is just that -posturing. Somebody is going to have to carry somebody; and it is not the foreigners. They are in too much of a hurry; too hurry to make real money. And too hurry to climb the next mountain, or dig the next well, wherever it is. This country has been left back so long and is so far behind that it doesn’t even know what it must do to catch up. The interest and will are not there, save for a handful. Who is going to deal with that reality? Cater for those deficits?
I don’t want to; and so do many Guyanese. Now the call is to burden the incoming with which we curse. Let’s get our peoples and platforms right first; those will determine the local content provisions that are due and pragmatic.
Yours faithfully,
GHK Lall
