With Guyana grabbing headlines in all the major news agencies about our massive oil find and its concomitant “highest growth rate in the world”, your Eyewitness wonders why local businesses weren’t prepared for carpetbaggers and grifters to arrive like locusts!! With every story emphasising our backwardness and underdeveloped institutions, wouldn’t they see us as Walter Raleigh did almost five hundred years ago: “like a virgin that had not as yet lost its maidenhead”!?!
In other words, all the hustlers in the world of business – and in business, “hustler” is quite redundant!! – have been informed we’re a prime candidate to be ravished. Which with the dog-eat-dog morality in even the most famous multinationals – remember the contract Raphael brought back? – means we can be raped if we resist!! And Raphael didn’t even resist!! Ouch!!
But it would seem locals bend over willingly once we are approached by businesses from the “developed countries” – especially the US, Britain. Chalk it up to the remnants of the colonial mindset?? They’re on a higher plane of business ethics than ours aren’t they?? Aren’t they the ones who taught us the ropes over the years with all the rules and laws that they enacted?? Well, that’s the point, isn’t it?? Their con men – who exist in all societies – have been at it so much longer than we poor natives who were just the other day exchanging cows for wives!!
Take a look at the con that prompted this piece. Some Louisiana medical services company, RemoteMD – meaning they’ve been dealing with oil companies like Exxon that have huge operations there – got the contract during the COVID epidemic to vaccinate some workers of a sub-contractor. RemoteMD passed on the job to some local labs. All good up to now, isn’t it?? The US company uses its contacts and shares the take with local companies.
But that was just the beginning of the story. After RemoteMD declared bankruptcy in the States, the locals evidently had never been paid. But while US laws allow their companies to walk away from their debtors as they “reorganise”, the Guyanese companies were left holding the bag!! And that’s NOT the end of the story!! Turns out the RemoteMD had billed the oil company contractor at FOUR TIMES what they’d been charged by the locals!! And we thought we Guyanese were greedy!! The Question, of course, is why hadn’t the Exxon contractors deal directly with the local labs?? Kickback?
So, what does the US Embassy say about all of this?? Our Businessmen must do better “due diligence”!! And US businesses must visit Guyana, ‘cause here, “business is culturally done on a face-to-face basis”.
So, if RemoteMD had interacted with our locals, they wouldn’t have raped them??
…choke-and-rob bandits
Some say everything moves in circles…and there’s REALLY nothing new under the sun!! Is this why we’re suddenly experiencing a wave of “choke and rob” in our not-so-fair capital?? The phenomenon had exploded back in the 1960s when the PNC was in the throes of ousting the elected PPP Government. Perceived PPP supporters – read Indian Guyanese, esp rural – who ventured into the city were targeted for the condign treatment. And what was a random series of attacks exploded into a directed tsunami.
So, in this new season of PNC discontent – when they’re again trying to oust an elected PPP Government by any means necessary after their foiled rigging attempt – are we to expect the present wave of choke and rob to again explode into a mugging tsunami?? Now your Eyewitness doesn’t want to be an alarmist – but this upsurge is troubling.
In NY, for instance, an upsurge in street muggings precipitated new policing tactics. Why not in GY??
…Parliamentary intrigue
In parliamentary governance the Opposition gotta accept that the Government with a majority of MPs gonna always have their way – via the floor vote.
Unless they can persuade some Govt MPs to switch!! Or seize the Mace!?!
