SMALL, little things cause Guyanese to feel discontented, and in resorting to blaming Government and venting their frustration in negativity, Paul Bennet, a Liverpool Village, Corentyne, resident, told former President Bharrat Jagdeo Thursday night at a youth forum in Berbice.Bennet interacts with his fellow citizens in Berbice, talking to people on the ground about their problems and their frustrations, and told Jagdeo that he finds it’s “the little things” that frustrate people.

That’s a profound insight. Guyanese know we’re developing, and that Government is propelling our nation forward, but we feel local leaders don’t care about our issues.
Opposition folks take advantage of these small, little issues that cause citizens to become frustrated and fed-up, to find a platform to tarnish the image of the freely and fairly elected Government.
However, many local public servants and community leaders and activists treat citizens’ complaints with callous disregard, an uncaring attitude, and intense impatience, frequently brushing aside citizen discontent as unnecessary inconvenience, thus causing a bad light to fall on Government.
The national media largely ignores ordinary citizens in our highly politicised society, so that citizens feel they lack a voice, and thus gravitate to those who listen to them and indulge them in fancy promises.
For example, several farmers with land grouses on the Corentyne found ready representation from a battery of Opposition lawyers, as they vent anger at “Government”, when local leaders failed to listen to and address their complaints.
But Opposition folks listen to citizens, and promise them the moon and the stars, if elected to Government. Citizens, in their frustration, blame Government, and embrace these Opposition promises.
Travel through this land and talk to Guyanese citizens in an open, authentic conversation, and it’s astonishing to feel the deep discontent and constant complaining against Government, with people pin-pointing sore points they experience in interacting with middle level public managers.
Leaders like President Donald Ramotar, Head of the Public Service Dr Roger Luncheon, and our Ministers, in travelling around the country, listen to citizens, and work hard to deploy solutions, but how much could a Minister or the President micro-manage our communities?
Government delegates micro-management of our communities to middle level managers and community supervisors.
Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs Anil Nandlall made the telling point on a national TV programme recently that, in some instances,Government sometimes faces poor supervising of the execution of public works contracted to firms, such as building of roads and construction of buildings. This the Opposition labels as corruption.
Government expects middle managers to constantly self-develop, always work on their leadership and service skills, and to interact with the public with good manners and selfless consideration and good conscience. Government cannot baby-sit its micro-managers employed and deployed across the country.
But this level of Public Servants fail citizens daily, and Guyanese vent their frustration against the vague idea of their “Government”.
We must take these things seriously if we’re going to satisfy citizens that we care about them, that we hold their best interest at heart, that we work for their development, that we put them first.
We now operate a fully democratic society, and President Ramotar’s style of leadership is for his Government to allow these middle managers and community micro-managers to show initiative, self-leadership and a penchant for personal development in their quest to serve our nation.
Police officers, nurses, doctors, managers, teachers, regional health and administrative folks and so on must serve first and foremost out of care for the citizens of our nation.
Repairing the brokenness that we suffered after our collapse in the 1980’s, remains today a major priority for Government, even as we embark on groundbreaking 21st century projects like the Amaila Falls hydroelectric project, and the expansion of our international airport.
That socio-economic collapse crippled our developmental wel-being so much so that we hold the world record for national brain drain. From the 1960’s, when thousands upon thousands of our citizens fled Guyana to Europe, North America and the Caribbean, we’ve bled our skills, talents, experience and bright minds. For decades our people fled the dictatorship with their feet, abandoning homes, land and businesses to escape the severe disruption of democracy and development in their homeland.
It’s only now that Guyanese are travelling with ease, vacationing in the US and Caribbean, to come back home. We’ve repaired major structures and systems over the past couple decades.
But we still suffer the crippling effect of that brain drain. Across the nation, our local communities feel the crushing weight of middle managers, public servants and bureaucrats who lack fundamental leadership skills.
Citizens across the nation fall back on blaming Central Government for their woes.
Why we see Guyanese citizens blame Government for every ill they encounter?
Many times, in encountering the Public Service, or in interacting with the State, citizens feel harassed, uncared for and under-serviced, even in our court system and law enforcement agencies.
Citizens vent their frustration on “Government”, an abstraction so vague and broad, so lacking concreteness, that the scapegoating process provides a sort of comfort for those fed-up with poor public service.
In Berbice, Essequibo and across wide swaths of our communities, farmers, housewives and hard-working citizens complain against their freely and fairly elected Government, focusing not the stunning achievements of Government in repairing our country and developing our lives, but instead on their problems.
What fuels this unfortunate negativity across the land is the attitude and arrogance and pride of local leaders, who see their position as a chance to lord it over their fellow citizens.
We’ve got to face these challenges as we propel ourselves forward. Opposition elements move into areas and foment citizen discontent and discouragement with hype against Government, instead of trying to offer workable solutions to the problem of our gutted Public Service.
It’s not the President’s fault, or any Minister’s, if a contractor executes poor work on a road in Parika, or if sections of roadways in Berbice lack street lights. Government governs to align our macro-economic systems, to operate a smooth justice system, to manage from the higher level.
On the lower rungs of managing our society, Government, as much as citizens, depend on State employees to perform with optimal service to citizens.
This aspect of our society we’re yet to fully repair, after the absolute collapse it suffered under the dictatorship period.
We cannot operate smooth Government until we see a fully trained, competent, efficient professional national pool of public servants deployed around the country to serve citizens.
These tough issues and challenges we must face and acknowledge and authentically discuss. Too many folks use such national anomalies to stir up mass hysteria among local communities and seek opportunistic positions of power, taking advantage of the discomfort and discontent among citizens.
Opposition folks ignore why this problem exists in the first place, claiming we should never discuss the past when the dictatorship crippled our human resource capital, when our citizens fled their homeland in fear.
We saw in the 1960’s and early 1970’s the entire national brain and economic class, comprising mostly our citizens of British and Portugese and Chinese background, flee this nation, with their private property forfeited to a paranoid State machinery that proceeded to stifle all our freedoms, assassinate our scholars and strangle our knowledge pool under the practice of paramountcy of the party, with the People’s National Congress (PNC) declaring itself god of Guyana. We cannot ignore this root of the problem we face today, whereby our citizens face a middle layer of public managers and operators of State agencies who lack people skills and effective service training.
People like Bennet, a public school teacher, care, and he talked to Jagdeo about the problem. Such open, authentic conversation brings the necessary healing we need to overcome the crippling of our society under PNC rule. We’re recovering, and it’s a process, but we’ve got to make sure community leaders treat every citizen with respect, care, consideration and good conscience.

by Shaun Michael Samaroo