…the suicide pimps
Over in the USA – from where so many folks learn the “tricks of the trade” of so many trades – they call one bunch of operators “poverty pimps”. And it’s not just about “poverty” in the strict sense. The Americans fuse a public-private approach to help all kinds of socially disadvantaged and challenged people on the not unreasonable assumption that the government bureaucracy may be too cold and impersonal for their target group. So quite a lot of public funds – billions and billions actually – are funnelled through private groups, formed to “help” the poor and the powerless.
In reality, while some may actually start out with the best of intentions, very soon even their operations fall into line with the even more numerous bunch that were launched explicitly to help themselves at the public trough – under the subterfuge of helping the underclass. These are the “poverty pimps”, who rake in the big bucks off the suffering of the same folks they say they’re helping.
Some of them take up the mantle after taking up “the cause” of some unfortunate group or other that’s been identified as deserving “help”. Funds, of course, have to be raised for the noble effort – so fund raisers become a permanent feature of their “work”. Publicity is the breath of life for “poverty pimps” – so many in the public eye see this “work” as the best of both worlds: they get their pics in the media and earn a positive tick for “helping the unfortunate”.
Very soon, they build-up “organisations” to “push” the work – and so of course bureaucracies must be built and funded to run them. The cost of running this bureaucracy invariably outstrips what they spend on “the work”. One of the dead giveaways of “poverty pimps” is – just as with the original pimps – their lifestyle and office are at least 10 times more ostentatious that what their target group can afford. Their offices are NEVER located in the neighbourhoods of their target group. In their pics, they’re frequently photographed at the “in places” in the company with the rich, famous – and in Guyana – the politically well connected.
In Guyana, after years of grass-root agitation, suicide appeared on the “national agenda” when out of the blue, Al Jazeera flashed over the international airwaves that Guyana was now number one in the world rankings. It didn’t need much more than this kind of publicity to create some “suicide pimps”.
Of course, there may be some serious ones. Just check them off against the criteria mentioned above.
…the hypocrisy in education
Prezzie so loveth the Founder Leader of the Party he now heads, he just gave up his only begotten dwelling to house all the groups working to keep – and burnish – Burnham’s memory. Very laudable. But one wonders at the name… Chetwynd Learning Centre. Chetwynd? We know Burnham oh-so-wanted to be British, but why this obscure – and obsolete baronetcy?
Anyhow the Founder Leader’s well-known advocacy for education was trotted out at the raison d’être for the Centre that will bring together the Burnham Education Scholarship Trust; the Burnham Book Trust and the Burnham Research Centre.
But your Eyewitness wonders if the rest of the People’s National Congress – especially Finance Minister Winston Jordan – is au fait with Burnham’s own travails in pursuing education – and which honed his perspective on the subject. His dad found it very difficult to keep him at the private Central High School – and it was only Burnham’s brightness that saved him when he won a place to Queens.
What would’ve happened if he had to pay Value Added Tax on his fees to Central??
…those who ignore sugar workers
“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main… and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”
