…for Govt workers
In our dear ole Mudland, Govt workers were never just…well… Govt workers!! They were a strategic asset to the group in office – to maintain power over the masses. The colonial Brits carefully created a governance structure with a backbone of whites – brought out from “home” – supported by colonials closely identifying with their interests. These were generally the “coloured” offsprings from the dalliances between whites who’d formed misalliances with local mistresses of African or mixed origins. After the freed Africans began educating themselves, some of them were co-opted into this local-coloured comprador class.
With the split of the PPP – engineered by the colonials, using the ambitious Burnham as their most willing tool – Government workers aligned with him against Jagan’s mostly Indian upstarts knocking at the door to get the coveted “govt wuk”!! And so it was before independence, and so it remained afterward: the Government workforce – called Civil Servants – joined by teachers, were a special lot who received inducements to support the Govt. They walked off their jobs in 1962 – when half of G/town was torched -and struck in 1963 to precipitate even more widespread civil violence that led to Jagan and the PPP’s ouster.
It wasn’t surprising, therefore, when the PPP eventually returned to office in 1992 – after 28 years in the political wilderness – they were more than a tad leery about Government workers’ proclivities! Their challenge was to find ways of getting them at least not to sabotage Government initiatives!! Now, in the fag end of PNC’s rule under Hoyte – forced into an IMF program because of Burnham’s unsustainable debt – Hoyte was ordered to reduce the Public Service, and thousands were fired. The PPP nixed that program – hoping they’d earn some brownie points – but were sorely disappointed when those same workers came out in a crushing strike in 1999, and they were forced into granting a 36% increase in salaries – even though the kitty was dry!!
And that’s been the pattern ever since: truculent demands on PPP governments for salary increases, totally unrelated to, say, productivity increases that’s now the norm across the globalized world to be competitive. When the Opposition PNC and AFC campaigned in the leadup to the 2015 elections – which they won – they promised a 50% salary increase to Public Servants and teachers. But in the inimitable words of ex-Pres Ramotar, they got “Larwah”!! Yet they kept supporting them, as their unions sold them down the river!
After 2020, the PPP struck a tempered approach to Government workers by offering solid annual retroactive salary increases averaging 8% – coupled with bonuses – that made the Christmas Season even more festive.
Pres Ali’s ensuring this year’s gonna be no exception!!
…from miscarriage??
Like most Guyanese, your Eyewitness was particularly horrified by the gruesome tale of that Sharima Gopaul and her lover, who murdered then chopped up her own daughter at Leonora; stuffed her into a suitcase, then dumped it into Madewini Creek. The kid was a high achiever at the Common Entrance, then at Queen’s. What kind of mother would do that to her own child?? Why?? Just because she wanted to experience the thrill of an affair with a married man??
Anyhow, your Eyewitness was pleased that, at the trial, the lover, Jarvis, was sentenced to 96 years while Sharima was sentenced to 106 years behind bars. Then, in what your Eyewitness considers to be a series of unfortunate reviews at different levels of the justice system, Jarvis was eventually freed and Sharima’s sentence was reduced to 25 years from her conviction in 2015. But to the shock of the nation, last week Sharima was freed!!
Now the GPS says it was a “miscalculation”, and she’s back behind bars!!
…of jumbies?
Cemetery Road was supposed to’ve been completed last July, but it remains a mess. Min Edgehill had claimed “superstitions” – read jumbies – were scaring away workers. With all our religions, can’t we have Obeah; Jaaray or Tabeej wuk pon dem jumbies??
