A MAN WHO CANNOT FEED HIS FAMILY IS LESS OF A MAN
In 1980, there were close to 100,000 workers in the public sector. This meant that one in every four employable Guyanese worked for the government.
However by 1986, the total number of workers in the public sector had been slashed to about 78,000, close to a twenty-five per cent decline.
It was not as if these workers had simply gone over to jobs in the private sector. The private sector in those days was economically enfeebled and would have been unable to accommodate the close to twenty-two thousand workers who had left.
The greater part of those leaving was retrenched. In 1982 alone, some four thousand government workers received their dreaded redeployment letters. It was a traumatic experience that led to the wholesale vending that has now taken over the country.
People had to make money and though there was little to sell, people could not go hungry. And so they peddled whatever there was to sell, which in those days of import restrictions amounted to tamarind balls, sugar cakes, plantain chips and locally manufactured chewing gums and mints. Do you know how many persons in this country avoided starvation by selling mints?
A great many persons also departed these shores never to return. They have tried to suppress that memory of what happened to them when they lost their jobs. It was a terrible period in the country’s history, one caused by economic mismanagement and particularly by an earlier expansion of government employment.
In those days if you wanted a government job, it helped, helped considerably if you had a party card for the ruling party. The party office was a virtual Ministry. In fact the Ministry of National Mobilization was a virtual party office and employed senior party operatives.
When they sent a worker to a government agency, it was not a case of the ministry examining whether a job was available. It was a case of the ministry being forced to find a job for that employee.
Three sets of problems arose because of this practice. The first was the ballooning of the State sector. The State sector became too large and this meant that large sums, sums not being earned because of the falling production and productivity, had to be found each month to pay wages. As a result, central government finances were thrown into disequilibrium.
The second problem was that there were many square pegs in round holes. You had persons sitting in front of typewriters who punched the keys with one finger while there were young girls just out of typing school typing at 120 words per minute who could not find a job even in this over-bloated public sector.
You had a great many incompetents holding down office. Some of them are still around. They did not have clue about the jobs to which they were assigned and this was one of the primary reasons why the economy instead of recovering continued to go into a tailspin.
The third problem that arose was discrimination. They were many ably qualified persons who were bypassed for promotion because party hacks had to be catered for. There were many individuals who were catapulted into senior government positions simply because they knew some top official, not because they could do the job. Many of them are still around, waiting for their retirement packages.
The lesson that this present generation should heed from this experience is one related to dispossession. There are many ways to rob a man of what he has. And a great deal of wealth has through rank criminality, been taken from innocent hard working persons and found its way into the hands of crooks.
But the most humiliating form of dispossession is for a man to lose the source of his livelihood. When over twenty thousand workers lost their jobs in the public sector in the six years beginning 1980, it caused real distress in homes because there is nothing worse, nothing more humiliating to a man than not being able to provide for his family. Those retrenchment letters that were received caused many families to suffer grievously.
Today, the tables have turned and now the private sector is the largest employer. In fact, one foreign company is now the largest private employer in Guyana. But GUYSUCO remains the largest public sector company and still employs thousands of Guyanese.
Those who make reckless statements about Guyana exiting sugar and who urge that ethanol and fish farms be considered are making the same sort of promises that the retrenched workers received during the period 1980 -1986.
Those workers were told that they were redeployed, that they would be placed elsewhere. Those jobs never materialized and people suffered.
If an alternative to sugar is to be found, it has to be phased in and phased in extremely gradually because there is no way that Guyana can ever recover from the dispossession that will result if the sugar industry is closed without the immediate prospects of finding alternative employment for displaced workers.
The 1980s must never again be repeated in this country.
