By GHK Lall-From a senior level in the government came the call: simplify the cash grant distribution. It was government urging government: from one very high office to the keeper of the cash, the Ministry of Finance. From the Ministry of Finance, the supposedly wise came up with this counsel: don’t all go and crowd the centers on the first day or so. Helpful in both instances, or saying something for something sake, and that is as deep as it goes?
A government is nothing but a shell. Leaders and their advisers and helpers are what makes a government function at a level, deliver fairly consistently. When the leaders are uncaring, place the interests of the masses at some rung below the secondary, then the troubles that have visited the cash grant distribution process intensify and expand.
Social media soothing does not comfort. Leadership reassurances that all will be paid crumples with a thud. A matter of credibility. One of trust, too. When the people sense that there is genuine care for their condition, then they are better at managing themselves, minimizing their desperation, their urgent need to wrap their hands immediately around that check.
Simply the process is a good call. But this one is so far along, and failed so much, that simplification is best advised for the next rounds of cash. Still, I believe that some remedial steps could be implemented right now, particularly in the more heavily congested areas. Region Four and Berbice stand out. The Hon. Minister of Finance had promised enough distribution centers during the pause for the budget. He has not made good on that promise. Simplification can occur right now, and here is how.
First, spread the people out: more centers. Or, stagger the wards that are identified to gather in a place for collection of checks. To expand, take one ward, such as Queenstown and announce time and place for those eligible residents alone. Then, do the same for Alberttown alone. When several thickly populated wards are forced into a time slot and under one tent, then the result is the result. It is inevitable, and for a few reasons. Too many citizens in too small a space, and a too tight a collection interval.
Too many poor Guyanese have been waiting too long. Too many have doubts about both the government and its leaders’ motives. Too many in Guyana are in such unbearable straits that even if they wanted to, they cannot help but to run to their assigned center in the quickest time, which is the first day, and in the first hour. Thus, the stage is set for what follows.
Second, the time set aside is too short. Avoid multiple wards in one place (as said before) and expand the time slots. Two days or four for some of those centers for so many well-peopled wards induce added urgency, fuel the rush, and generate the levels of anger and frustration noted.
The politics of the circumstances do not help, either, which is putting matters delicately. Guyanese are capable of the good sense that allows them to assess a situation, and act accordingly. What they are seeing is an arrangement that is bound to be survival of the fittest and the niftiest. So, they hustle out and they cluster around and they curse their circumstances that they came with, and those standing in front of them.
The government should have learned some lessons from what has accompanied senior citizen annual pension book distribution. It has been too tight, too demanding, for a vulnerable population segment. Appropriate adjustments were necessary for the cash grant distribution, considering the much vaster population that qualifies and waiting.
Amid the gleaming towers, the splendid numbers, and the sweet speeches of those who have already enriched themselves from the national wealth, there is this most monumental of testimonies involving the cash grant distribution. The cash grant distribution exercise is that proverbial picture that paints a million words. Inspires a thousand thoughts. Leads to more conclusions that the impacted can handle. I think that the Ministry of Finance could have done better. It just didn’t care to do so.
One of its so-called wisemen urged Guyanese to think against going to collect on the first day or so. A man filled with the fat of the land is always a good fountain of advice for the unfed and unsteady. Manage self, betterment is around the corner. My thinking is that if that call is taken to heart by those who deigned to listen, then all that is achieved is to shift the crowd from the first day to other days. Shifts, not spread out, if that verbal six-for-nine is obeyed. I detect people at Finance with egg on their faces trying to present a clean mug.
The government may not like nor agree, but the incompetence surrounding the cash grant distribution speaks not to the excitement of the richest citizens in the word. It speaks to the ugliness and desperation of mostly poor people in a land and time of fabulous riches. No amount of leadership selling, no political propaganda, can compete, or overturn, that reality.
