Dear Editor,
Necks stretching. Eyes gazing. Ears waiting. Feet tapping. Anger rising. It is a glimpse of the elderly in motion, in suspension, as they waited patiently for the $25,000 cash rollout at various centres across the country, with particular emphasis on what went on in Georgetown. I was an eyewitness, heard firsthand, and also what came to me secondhand via phone and media. If it were one centre only, there could be sympathy, but it was all over. I share what I label elder brutality from the Ministry of Inhuman Services.
I spent two hours and ten minutes at the Alberttown Basketball Court. It was two hours too long for such a simple 30-second exercise, at the end of which I felt as though I had endured a full NBA game, with elbows and a few flagrant fouls. This ministry should be ejected from consciousness. The staff laboured, unthinkingly sometimes, not skillfully on occasion; they are spared. They worked with what they have, whatever standards set. The Hon Minister of Human Services should go gracefully: resign. For this (pension books, elder consideration, citizen treatment) to be the norm yearly for a book (or cash trickles) is beyond embarrassment, more than rank institutional debacle. It is foulest shame, an outright national disaster, when some 75,000 citizens in Guyana’s population could be maltreated from one pillar to the next post.
I could be wrong, but reports are that Minister Persaud visited the Redeemer Lutheran Church in Campbellville last week. Thanks for caring, sparing a moment, minister. When the complaints raged, her first defence was ‘it is not our fault.’ When will these people understand that a Minister is Chair, President, and CEO of an entity, a business, a service. I humbly inform and re-inform the hon. minister that every single thing that happens under her watch is her responsibility, and when things do not add up, it is still the duty at which she has failed. Every bee, rat, and roach that tarnish her portfolio is her responsibility, and whatever negatives ensue are her fault. She should reacquaint herself with President Truman’s motto. Everything is her responsibility. Not matter how deserving, I will not insult Minister Persaud by referring to her leading the angry, disgusted citizens in song during her visit. She is not that kind of singing nun, and I hope that the song was “We shall overcome” or “not a blade of grass”, and not some political battle song.
For grass was the food fed to senior citizens desperate for the paltriness of 25 large ones. Holy Rosary Roman Catholic Church took 6 hours for one citizen; one citizen fainted, and had to be tended by her peers. How can the ministry extend care to battered women and the terribly disabled, when the staff downed their heads, and continued unmoved. Whether heart condition or diabetes or hypertension or a combination of those and other serious complications, plus the weight of age, this was the plight of the elderly in Alberttown, the Palms, Trinity Church, Aubrey Barker Street Centre, Cultural Centre tarmac, and all the way to Leguan. Eight places of elder punishment, in a cash rollout exercise that was a horror of horrors. Six hours here, four hours there. I sum this up along these lines: heh, tek dah, yuh deh pun yuh own. This is the modern Guyana-rich and extravagant-now so savaged and ravaged by deceptive, callous politicians, who have never embraced what it is to be servants of the people.
If we do not take care of our own people in their time of need, then their children may not be there when needed. If we cannot get the basics of distributing an envelope with some degree of efficiency, with some bread and rice money inside, then how can we ever be equipped to manage those who menace this nation on the periphery of its boundaries? A number of strangers said to me: ‘please make sure that something is written about their ordeals, compliments of the Ministry of Inhumanity and Social Depravity. I fulfill the duty given. The hope is that I have conveyed their anxieties, the urine withheld, the faintness that hovered, and their anger bottled up.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
