I NEVER regretted growing old. When you study philosophy, you will understand that growing old is an existentialist inevitability. If you embrace existentialism, then you will understand why staying young has no intrinsic philosophical value.
I recommend to you the best book written on existentialism, although it was done in 1927. No book on philosophy can match it; Martin Heidegger’s, “Being and Time”.
But there are times I regret I have become older, and the energy and emotions are not there to try to change my country and the world.
Two things caught my eyes this past week. One is the article by the Chronicle’s Monday columnist, Leonard Craig (October 28) on the commercial banks in Guyana, and how they treat working-class people unfairly.

The other was the publication of Republic Bank’s after-tax profit that rose by 47.89 per cent, and reading that Demerara Bank’s after-tax profit was elevated by 37 per cent. The announcement of this increase when juxtaposed with Craig’s article made me feel that I wanted to be young again, so I can fight the class battles I once fought since I was a young 16-year-old “youth-man”.
For the past 10 years; not ten months, I stood alone in this entire country and discussed the unfair treatment the banks dish out to the proletarian population of Guyana, and this includes not only the urban working-class but the rural proletariat, too. Only Leonard Craig has joined me, and he did so ten years after I began my crusade.
There has been no denunciation from civil society, political parties, newspaper editorials, etc., of how the banks treat small depositors.
Chris Ram and I were talking the other day, and he mentioned the problems people have with the NIS, but the conversation did not last long enough for me to tell Chris about the banks, a topic which is straight up his alley, because he is a financial analyst.
Chris did say to me that the world is going right-wing, and I agreed. Maybe that global trend has come to Guyana, because where is the left-wing thinkers in Guyana that can expose the class mentality of the financial houses in Guyana?
Here is a quote from Craig’s article. I suggest if you still care about the working people of this country then read Craig. His column is titled, “Banking in Guyana is stuck in the Dark Ages”. He wrote: “Commercial banks are aligned and conspire to provide some of the most oppressive financial situations that disproportionately affect poor and working-class people.”
Craig went on to offer several examples of class discrimination, which space constraint will prevent listing, but please read this one: “Further, the commercial banks of Guyana have a collaborative rule that inter-bank- deposited cheques above $500,000 go through a process called ‘Special Clearance’, where the transaction is fast-tracked, and the recipient gets access to the funds on the same business day.
“All cheques with values below $500,000 have to wait three business days. If you are transacting pittances of $30,000, by convention, you need to wait, but those are the people who most need to access their funds to either turn it over in a ‘lil’ hustle or meet pressing needs.”
Craig is prodigiously correct. The carpenter does some work on the house of a businessman, he gets a cheque. Business people do not deal with cash. That carpenter’s wife is waiting for that money to buy the necessities of life. How can you ask her to wait for three days, because that is the time when her husband will get the cash?
Craig’s article did not deal with the banks’ absolute misinterpretation of the anti-money laundering act. I get some heart-breaking complaints. A top name in journalism in the State media had to face this misinterpretation.
My wife faced it, and I made a noise and went straight up to the manager. My mother-in-law had died, so my wife closed the joint account.
The attendant asked her for proof of address. She said that is a requirement in keeping with the anti-money laundering Act. I told her that is not so, and it is silly to ask someone closing an account for proof of address, since there is no longer a business relation with the depositor. The manager told the attendant the request was not necessary. But they are doing that to working-class people.
I am going to close with a sad story you are not going to believe.
There is a woman working at Hand-in-Hand Insurance Company. She went to close her account, because it had become dormant. The bank told her she has to produce certain documents when an account becomes dormant; she is unable to get them. She cannot access her own money. What has that got to do with money laundering?

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.