Dear Editor,
In times of great tragedy, there is the press, the call, the need for great sensitivity. In one instance of stark recent tragedy, heavy-handed may be the best description of the official reaction. In summary form, it amounts to this: take this, sign here, and let us be done with this situation (a nice word for untimely nuisance), with all moving on to better things. It is the way that I interpreted the latest development from the inferno at the Mahdia School Dormitory. It may be said by some that $5 million is more than a thoughtful, caring consideration. No! It can never be! Not when a life is involved, 20 of them, all not yet 20. By my way of thinking, $5 million per child is a cheap insult, adding contempt to already crushing circumstances. Officialdom may sell to itself that $5 million is big money for people who may have never seen $50,000 all at once. Therefore, it is more than generous, it is a windfall that cannot be matched for care and compassion. I search for a suitable word. Vulgar is a start.
For sure, $5 million serves as a heady anesthetic, but not for anybody for too long. Before long, it is all gone. The numbness of grief may have brought on a sleepwalker’s state, especially those who live with the brutal blows of more than one victim. Such a number fuels recklessness and disinterest, what does it mean? What difference does it make? It is only money, and it is a reminder. As an instrument of barter, a million times five for a life, it is the most callous of one-sided, exploitative bargains. Before anyone who harbours certain passionate instincts gets defensive, I urge consideration of a single fact first, then a related one afterwards.
Fact Number 1: the 20 children who died at Mahdia were in pursuit of an education to lead to the pathway for more education possibly, and a better life; one that is out of a likely hereditary depressed condition. With approximately 40 years of work life and earnings in front of them, and using the official minimum monthly wage as the baseline for purposes of this calculation, the offered $5 million is surpassed in about six years. The other 34 years of potential earnings are not accounted for, even at the lowest level in Guyana, but there is celebration of the good cheer and tender care by the powers who came up with that grand, magical $5 million dollar figure, as just recompense.
This is simply a calculation for lost earnings, nothing else; $5 million is a drizzle, the first paltry digit. There should be more, but there are no multimillion-dollar add-ons for a) the children being in the care of the State; b) the negligence of the State; c) pain and suffering; and) cruel and inhuman conditions. For simplicity, and to emphasize the point, there is no monetary consideration for the trauma of family members. Nor are the intangibles mentioned, such as future remittances to community, or actual community input that adds value in a variety of ways, but to which no number is attached.
When I take the above into consideration, $5 million is not this prince of a figure on a white horse, but contemptuous to the point of cunning deviltry. I must ask this question: first replicate the harrowing circumstances (an ugly thought itself), but shift the venue far away from a poor, remote, and ill-equipped indigenous community, closer to a city neighbourhood. Now for the question: would $5 million be the figure finalized? I think not. It would be the thought that never got past the part of the brain that generates such schemes, such a low and dirty trick on the weakest, most vulnerable citizens in this country. And in their time of unimaginable sorrow. In Guyanese: catching them on the hop, when they are reeling, when senses are not intact, but badly frayed.
It is of those pretending to be friends, but who are never anything but frauds. There should be $5 million alone for entrapment. When our dead are treated in this nauseating manner, and their surviving family members intimidated and brutalized again, there cannot be any chatter about doing anything that is honourable. There is only the calculatedly heartless. This working quickly to close a deal, lockout any future liability. Even in the politest, kindest contemplation, $5 million describes more than the disgraceful, more than the disgusting. It is adding the devastating to the destructive, criminally so.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall