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May 19, 2002: The British Government has announced that they will be funding a study to help stop the brain drain in Guyana and other Caribbean countries. This makes no sense. It is a waste of money, unless of course the British is trying to put some pounds into the pockets of some English consultants. This of course is old news to third world people.
A large percentage of aid money goes back to the citizens of the donor countries. These countries give the poorer countries non-stop grants to undertake a study into this and a study into that. Then up comes a bunch of neatly attired Europeans and North Americans who are then housed at the Pegasus, and within a couple of months, they are back home with fat consultancy fees and they leave behind reports that educated Guyanese and West Indians could have done themselves.
Last month, Dr. Mark Kirton and Dr. Daniel Kumar and I from UG met an important person from the Canadian aid organization CIDA. He wanted to talk to the political analysts about a new aid program CIDA has started. This is for small amount like say about a million and it cuts out the bureaucracy so the money is dispensed in quick time. You are supposed to be elated but the hidden reality is that this new aid will be going to Canadians not Guyanese and West Indians.
Actually there is no money involved. Well yes, there is money involved but not for local specialists. According to this CIDA chap, if Guyanese need to finance a study, then this new fund will do it quickly, by sending in the Canadian technocrats to do it. So let operationalise this project. The police force in Guyana needs to have a quick study on how to streamline its public relations. The GPF applies to this new fund, a million dollar is granted for the study. Four Canadian come down, talk to the police, the government, the opposition and civil society. A report is completed, the specialists after putting up at the Pegasus and Hotel Tower leave first class with BWIA. But why are Canadians the best people to study the PR needs of the police in Guyana? Why not a group from our neighbour, say Trinidad?
So what can British academics tell us about the brain drain in Guyana that we in Guyana don't know? Why are trained people leaving Guyana? For one and one reason only. And I repeat, one and one reason only. What they take home at the end of the month cannot enable them to do the following: pay a fairly good rent or buy a house; purchase the necessary amount of food that is adequate for the family, buy a small car so the family can have psychological comfort that every human being needs; send the kids to a good school with the required resources that are necessary for such an undertaking and this will include books, lunch money and apparati that are needed for science courses; undertake studies at the university after the kids would have graduated from high school; buy the amenities that every house need to have in the 21st century and these include computers, electric iron, washing machines, stereo equipment etc; money for the parents and kids to have periodic holidays, but even Kaieteur is too expensive to visit.
Salaries in Guyana cannot do these things. And one has to admit that in underdeveloped Guyana, it would be asking too much. But surely, even if we cannot pay adequate salaries we can embrace innovations that will make people believe that there will light at the end of the tunnel. I will enumerate these programs by starting with UG as an example. The state erected a Berbice campus of UG at Port Morant and asked the Turkeyen lecturers to help bring it alive by going up there to work. Then a horror show followed.
The UG administration asked the faculties to send their best lecturers. But we were suppose to travel more than eighty miles from Georgetown by getting up early in the morning, catch a bus, accept lunch money that couldn't buy a "chinee" food and take payment that UG pays to part-time lecturers, that was about $G500 per hour. For God's sake, how can you stop skilled people from leaving Guyana when you are pushing them into a cul-de-sac of nightmarish motion. So the UG lecturers struck back. They argued if you want us to go up there then do the following -- extend us with duty-free cars; provide us with a handsome lunch fee; give us a civilized sum for the hours we will be teaching; allocate comfortable sleeping quarters for those who couldn't travel back to Georgetown. This was not the end of the story. After these concessions were finalized, classes were scheduled to begin but were held up for three weeks because the duty-free letters were hard to come by. So the lecturers said only after the possession of these letters would they travel to commence their teaching stints.
Here is a good example of a situation where you can substitute resources for actual money, and I am referring to the duty free cars and the over-night lodging in the UG example. If you can't pay nurses and teachers, then give them what you have. And you have land. Create a monumental space in this gargantuan territory and call it Nurseville. A lot should be 200 ft length by 120 feet width. Set up the same for teachers. Set up the same for the police. Set up the same for public servants. Then arrange for a business house to bring in reasonable cheap Japanese cars, arrange for interest-free loans and extend duty free concessions. People can't buy cheap reconditioned cars because these car dealers are sharks. They import these cars cheaply and price them highly. This explains why overnight these car dealers are billionaires living in mansions.
It was really stupid, (and shirt-sighted is not the right word) for the government to have taken that large piece of land right in front of UG and sell it almost for a song to GUYSUCO senior staff. That is where the university is. That is where you could have created a university community. But not content with selling the university perimeter to non-UG people, the government then proceeded to give UG land to the football federation. UG was saved only when Mr. Blatter and Mr. Warner of the international football federation were exposed as double-talkers. Really by the time the British Government complete their study of how to stop the brain drain in Guyana, there will be no brains left in this land.