President of the University of Guyana Student Society (UGSS), Sherrod, Duncan, has been quoted as saying that students vandalize their colleagues’ properties and break and enter vehicles to steal laptops and other valuables. Persons spend most of their days in their work or school environments, and these should be as safe as one’s home, because it is virtually impossible to keep vigilant to avoid theft of one’s property all the many hours one is at work or at their learning institution.
The University of Guyana is this country’s highest centre of learning and one expects professionals to emerge from this institution.  Heaven help our country because, if this is the kind of profligacy that prevails at this tertiary institution of academia, then the decadence in our society is spiraling out of control.
At every level of our society there is boundless dishonesty.  In the public and security services stories abound of nurses stealing from patients, police personnel taking bribes and even hiring out their weapons to robbers.  The rude and crude non-delivery of effective and efficient service to members of the public by persons who are paid and receive many benefits from tax-payers money is endemic in the society and would not be tolerated anywhere else in the world.
Contractors commit to a job then skive on the materials and the quality of workmanship.  Taxi drivers rob passengers.  Recently there was a case where a daughter robbed her aged father of his savings that he entrusted to her.
In the media fraternity colleagues steal cameras, cell phones, USB’s and even money.  Prison officers have been known to smuggle restricted items to prisoners, while persons unendingly – out of grudge, spite, or jealousy, spread rumours that have no basis on fact about others whom they envy or wish to harm in some way or another.
Some mothers encourage their children to steal from schoolmates, and as the youngsters grow older they accept the booty their teenagers bring home without question.
Politicians lie and misrepresent facts about their country to garner support and discredit their opponents at international forums, despite the harm their actions cause to their countries and the people who they ostensibly care about.
Persons frame others to get them into trouble and many innocent persons are languishing in jail because they unwittingly agreed to drop a parcel for someone without realizing that the parcel contains illegal substances.  Lawyers demand massive fees from clients then refuse to show up during trials.  Some have even been known to rob their clients of properties and monies.
And the judiciary of the country?   The consensus is that there is no honesty in the judiciary in Guyana.  Just ask the man-in-the-street.