–downplayed, but turbulent nevertheless

I LIVE in a different part of Georgetown. Now, last Monday morning, my wife drew my attention to a scene that supports the discourse we have been having in and out over the last year on the subject of this article.
Charity was conducted from a business place. About thirty ‘beggars’ were assembling; some could be seen hurriedly coming up the street towards the location. Of the group of some 30, only one female was visible. This is not to say that there aren’t females begging, but as a pedestrian, I know the professional beggar-women who traverse Regent Street and Church and Camp Streets. Add them to a crew that travels from Diamond for the same purpose, they don’t amount to 20 souls.
The composite of these male beggars are not all ‘sagiwangs’ or the destitute aged. Many of them are work-capable and not the traditional beggars of long ago, who callously exploited our sympathies while they purchased their second property.
That Emancipation 2017 is commemorated in the season of a male crisis is easy to reach collective agreement, with very simple recognitions of the social landmarks of purgatory around us.
A: More males are in prison than females who outnumber us.
B: The Public Service is populated by more females across the board.
C: Most stores in the private sector are almost 90% female on the floor.
D: Even in the security-guard sectors, there is an almost equal ratio between the genders.
E: With the street-selling vendors, women outnumber males by an easy 80%, while in the drug yards, sleeping on the streets and exploited as cheap labour around the markets are all 90% male.
The Joint Services also have their female representation intact. This occurred not through the laziness of the male population worldwide. Yes, it is a worldwide phenomenon, but in the case of Guyana, it is what it is, because governments over the past 40 years were overburdened by the conflicts of political entrenchment, abuse and sabotage, and lost sight of the consequences of the indifferent monster of ‘Modernisation’. (354)

A COMPLEX CULTURE
Modernisation and the complex common culture of the semi-skilled employment pool that males were urged into that provided more instant income than the office job, urged and encouraged into by many cash- strapped mothers, peer pressure and the “saga-boy” impulses that produced unprepared fathers, and the confusion of the economic constraints that status commanded.
Also important was the fact that Guyana, or British Guiana, always had a shortage of employment opportunities, even in the pre- independence years. With the many requirements for shovel-men and carpenters to provide yard latrines, to dig and maintain village trenches and dig water wells, good paying jobs were difficult to acquire.
With Independence, we were a nation of an average 80% male, muscle-driven, semi-skilled labourers. I worked at GRB; that facility was nicknamed ‘Children Property’ until political arson reduced it to ashes in 1977.
This was a tough waterfront environment: Hard work, good overtime, and constant tantalise that could, and did lead to fist fights, lots of suck-teeth tax deductions, and good pay packet once work was available.
When work was out of season, there was ‘Transport’, John Fernandes, chip-and-paint at Sprostons or Number One; always options on the water front.
These jobs are all gone now. Nothing has replaced them, except for “suitcase trading” and smuggling for a while. And these have also disappeared; the “Call on Centre” on Lombard Street is a place of ghosts. The waterfront became modernised, with containers and barrels and numerous courier services.
Modernisation also impacted on the technical skills. My brother is a trained electrician, who found a bigger pay packet on America Street changing currency.
I summoned him years later to fix a fluorescent lamp I was having problems with. He looked at the ballast and confessed that it was different from what he had dealt with before. I had to get another electrician.
The same can be said of plumbers who may have worked as apprentices in the days of red lead and gasket, and cannot remember when a ‘bend’ rather than a ‘knee’ is necessary.
With a preponderance of bogus contractors and part tradesmen, all consequences of the far-reaching impact of a chaotic condition of disorderliness that was over-exploited during the last administration to shift monies through front men here and there to the injury of the nation, we do unreasonably expect some ‘magic’ from the current administration.
And there are long overdue mysteries that need to be clarified with the legal wand. And if my sources are correct, then it is the legal framework that determines how the nation conducts its business that is found wanting. That there are no legislative criteria to determine who is an Engineer in the fields of Industry, then any and everybody is an Engineer; and the public has no beacon to guide them, their very lives, and constrained finances. (474)

NO HUMAN OBLIGATIONS
Also, for the procedures and expectations of the numerous ‘Security Guard’ services, there are no laws that commit them to any reasonable human [staff] operational obligations; the majority of these entities constitute severe exploitation, with unskilled males as their primary prey.
In the area of entertainment, promoters get away with murder. I have witnessed singers sing their hearts out and being told that the show “didn’t mek no money”, while the girlfriend picked up two days before the show gets a scooter.
The most disturbing reference that implies intervention can be drawn from the elements surrounding the Pepper Creek, Konawaruk incident.
1: How was the land acquired?
2: That a Judge allowed an injunction that prevented GGMC, the guardian, from examining the operation.
3: That this aberration took the lives of ten males, and no one was held accountable.
4: That political connections and Law Enforcement friendships played a part then, as similar interventions seem to have also participated in a current alleged treasonous contention with the same group.
The pork-knocker bush [Guyana’s mineral fields] has, for over 130 years, sustained thousands of families and entire villages as a traditional source of income. The dismal reasons for its current condition is well understood, but it has to be returned to the people.
This is an enclave of male income; it must be healed. The crisis of manhood is not an assumption; it is real, and overflows with disruptive consequences onto the stability of the family, and the national safety.
I do look forward, in early 2018, to the resumption of the Guyana Youth Corps. This couldn’t happen at a better time.