Guyana has me scratching my head

Something must be wrong with my country—horribly wrong. Almost each morning in the past month and now at the start of this month I wake up to news of someone being killed. I remember at the end of last year, I hoped that the New Year would bring the peace and quiet for which this country had become well known. That has not been the case. I would not detail the murders, because everyone knows about them. There are more news agencies than there ever was and each of them broadcast the horror in chilling detail. The electronic media even publish the gruesome photographs. There was a time when the public made known their displeasure at the publication of these photographs in the newspapers and even by the television stations that featured a newscast. Today, the country is taking these things in stride. In fact, the younger people actually rush to see these photographs with ghoulish glee. Something must be wrong with my country. I am no sociologist, but I think I know what is responsible for this trend. It has to do with people thumbing their noses at the police who are supposed to the guardians of the peace. This is due to the fact that the very police have become agents of prey on the population. A young singer actually recorded a song about the harassment he undergoes at the hands of the police, because he happens to own a motorcycle that is the vehicle of choice for some armed robbers. Then there are the motorists who do everything right, but who are still shaken down by ranks who man roadblocks. At the same time there are ranks who do their utmost to uphold the good name of the force. These are the people who scurry to the scene of every crime and try to get answers. These are the people who just happen to know the criminals and who would do what. But they are not paid as they should. Some time back, the society called on the then President Bharrat Jagdeo to pay the police and teachers better, but he declined. He claimed that such a decision would put a burden on the national coffers. I did not agree because I happened to see more money being spent on projects that actually disappear into nothingness, taking with them money that could have been better spent. The police may not come from the best of the academics but that is an issue of recruitment. Pay them better and many of the academics would seek out a life in the force. It is the same with teachers. I am a reporter and even here I recognize that we do not get the more academic of the lot, but we do get people who reason better than many. The pay does a lot to force these people to improve. It would be the same with the police and the teachers. The teachers would concentrate more on the children and thus reduce the numbers who simply disappear into the streets, only to emerge as full-fledged criminals ready to work for anyone who has a dollar to give them. At the same time, Guyana is without needed skills, although it has the population that could satisfy the need for skills. There is a construction boom and many of the contractors complain that they cannot get enough people. That is because the young men who would have been available are too busy taking money to kill people or are busy planning robberies that would give them the money they need to splurge. A long time ago I warned of this and I begged for a course of action. I suggested that we put the better teachers at the lower end of the academic scale so that by the time the children reach primary school they could read and write. And by the time they are ready for the national examinations they would be so much better than their counterparts today. I was ignored. If this was done ten years ago, the teenagers who are now the perpetrators of crime would have been gainfully employed. This is not to say that there would not have been criminals, but when one looks at the Caribbean islands where many Guyanese teachers take care of the children, the crime wave is a drop in a bucket compared to Guyana. Firecrackers are supposed to be banned, but the other night some young person let off a string of them. People in the vicinity and even the police mistook them for gunshots; such is the prevalence guns in the society. They responded, but as usual, no one said anything, the police were not sure of the location and the matter simply died. A few hours later the police were responding to another killing, this time a woman who had her throat slit. Something is horribly wrong in Guyana.