Our world today – gender – re-assigning
Upfront let me record my solid position as a government pensioner frequently creating assignments to assist paying monthly bills from time to time: public servants’ basic salaries should have been increased by fifteen (15%) percent, if not higher!
(Note that I’m not supporting opposition “demands” for 50% – 100% increases. That’s what oppositions do when out of office.)
Next I want to remind – if really actually necessary – those over – 65 letter-writers that Forbes Burnham would routinely “grant” his government employees a very nominal increase in November/December so that they “would enjoy their Christmas holidays”, promising that “this interim increase will in no way `prejudice’ imminent negotiations with your union”.
Of course there would be no further salary increases any time soon. It is quite apposite to note here that that Burnham technique was nimbly, enthusiastically adopted by young President Jagdeo. Since those times it was appreciated by various regimes that our poor public servants would hardly heed any strike calls. They were/are needy and depend on even the insulting salaries to survive.
In any case their union – the GPSU – has long been relegated to a toothless tiger – or poodle? – led by one President – for life! So is that why many civil/public servants allegedly create schemes within the service to supplement wages and salaries? Hence my undermentioned remarks.
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Good public servants, naughty mean public servants
Frankly and openly speaking, I have owed the New Building Society for some time but I’ve been made to pay. However whenever I go there the quality of cheerful professional service never fails to impress. Unlike that at many government ministries and/or related agencies. Are government workers short and surly because of salary and conditions? Even though they actually opted for the job? Is it so endemic over decades that a, very, very, very well paid traffic cop will still seek a bribe? Poor us.
I did not want to believe a reasonably well-grounded driver, claiming to have relatives in one of the “Disciplined” Services, when he told me that certain employed drivers would arrange to steal new vehicle parts; substitute old ones; then report “faulty parts” to access new ones yet again! He also spoke of creative fuel-smuggling from government sources. I gave up.
There are still many young public servants willing to really serve, to be trained for their life-long career. Reward them appropriately and generously.
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The Afro-Guyanese “condition”: Who/what responsible?
My lead caption and issue last Friday was “Indian-descended Guyanese: Enduring success. Why?” It was fairly well-read I happen to know. Almost “naturally” one or two skeptical readers encouraged my insights into “the black man’s condition/status” here. I can’t do justice in these very few paragraphs but my basics follow.
First, it must be accepted that the post slavery Afro-Guyanese – still colonial Africans (1838-1860’s) technically – were sabotaged from sustaining their coastal village movement but yet assisted their more modern masters in maintaining the “public service”, the security police service along with teaching and nursing when not in the various trades. Africans thus were even conduits for the descendants of the Indo-Indentureds who ventured into (colonial) “government”; even as they – the “Indians” – held onto land and entered commercial life.
Afros would, justifiably, remind all that “black” teachers taught all others in the beginning; as did Afro nurses and doctors provide early national health care. So what befell these care-givers?
To me, frankly speaking, they never grasped the top rungs of the economic ladder. It’s debatable but my take?
Why did not the first Afro-owned pharmacies, bakeries, tailoring establishments, construction companies, quarries and/or architectural firms, for example, thrive and expand? Competition from the emergent groups? Discrimination by the banking system? No sustained contracts from unfriendly governments?
I know that today’s Afro-descendants will cite all of the immediate above as the reasons, the causes for their relative stagnation. But even if evidence of rabid discrimination by commercial banks could actually be proffered; if proof of governmental preferences is real, couldn’t consortiums of Black Businesses combine to challenge all that? And they had 33 years of their own since 1964!
Frankly speaking, to me too many African-Guyanese opted for migration; then unlike the other groups, no Diaspora Joint Initiatives were established back in the homeland. Next time I’ll explain why I think Afro-Guyanese are Afro-Guyanese’s worst enemies.
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Today’s world of “engineered genders”
It’s about forty years ago I came around to accepting whatever gender people chose to be or to be known by. I was slow to accept that some persons succumbed to be unlike how or what they were born to be. But I’ve been long there now. Respecting those deemed to be LGBTQ+.
What has just non-plussed me however is current American news about young children being made to undergo “gender – re-assigning or gender-transition/affirmation” surgeries! It’s about doctors altering the genders babies were born with! This is our world now? More to come. I’m still watching and reading.
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A bit to ponder…
● 1) Comrade Attorney-General Nandlall is quite proficient at nailing the opposition lies about “bloated election lists”, “dead/migrated persons” voting and such like?
I suppose it has to be done. But score some points for the opposition strategy to sow doubts in some minds. Election-wise they’re making out that the PPP is now the old PNC. Ho-ho-ho.
That debate really necessary?
Til next week!
