Dear Editor,
The phrase “It was not my job” is one of the most quietly destructive shields in human history. On its surface, it sounds like a reasonable boundary, a simple statement of professional scope; yet beneath that ordinary posture lies a dangerous form of bureaucratic detachment that routinely paves the way for exploitation and systemic injustice. When individuals and institutions hide behind narrow job descriptions or strictly defined contracts, they strip away moral agency, creating a convenient distance between their routine actions and the real-world harm inflicted on human lives.
The historical record offers grim warnings about what happens when societies allow compliance to replace conscience. The philosopher Hannah Arendt famously described the “banality of evil” during the trial of Adolf Eichmann, noting how ordinary administrators justified horrific atrocities during the Holocaust by insisting they were merely fulfilling their assigned duties. Decades later, during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide, civil servants and international personnel alike washed their hands of the crisis, prioritising rigid protocol over human survival while nearly 800,000 lives were lost.
Even in our own national history, the 1978 Jonestown Massacre claimed over 900 lives in the Guyanese jungle largely because local authorities, trapped in jurisdictional hesitation and willful ignorance, failed to intervene against a heavily armed sect. While corporate commerce is fundamentally different in nature from these historical tragedies, history demonstrates a consistent truth: whenever human beings or powerful organisations declare that ethical responsibility stops where an official duty ends, devastating consequences follow.
Today, this same underlying logic of detachment has found a comfortable home in our national economic landscape, particularly within Guyana’s booming oil sector. When ExxonMobil Guyana President Alistair Routledge publicly proclaimed that it was “not our job to build the nation,” he explicitly articulated a corporate philosophy that confines responsibility strictly to contractual boundaries and resource extraction.
That statement may reflect standard corporate legal scope, but when uttered in a developing nation whose natural wealth is generating staggering global revenues, it highlights a profound ethical vacuum. To claim that a multinational corporation operating on an unprecedented national scale has no broader obligation to the host country enabling its prosperity is to resurrect a deeply troubling posture of corporate indifference.
Stressing this corporate posture is essential because ExxonMobil’s footprint in Guyana shapes our entire economic and social trajectory. By insisting that its duties begin and end at the exact boundaries of a contract, the energy giant insulates itself from the societal realities created by its extraction.
Under current arrangements, where the state receives a disproportionately small fraction of the sector’s returns, vast wealth is generated while local populations carry the environmental, infrastructural, and social burdens. Dismissing these systemic inequities as outside corporate duty mirrors classic colonial dynamics, where foreign entities reap immense rewards from local resources while remaining entirely detached from the long-term well-being of the host populace.
The damage of this corporate detachment extends far beyond financial figures; it poisons the public ecosystem of governance and accountability. When corporate leaders normalise the idea that social obligations are optional additions rather than core responsibilities, it encourages local leaders and regulatory bodies to adopt the same self-exonerating posture.
Public officials begin passing blame to one another or hiding behind contract clauses, creating a culture where no entity takes responsibility for safeguarding national sovereignty or ensuring equitable growth. When economic power operates without civic responsibility, the result is a marginalised populace watching its national heritage converted into private balance sheets.
As our nation navigates this defining moment in its history, we must firmly reject the invocation of “It was not my job” as an acceptable defense for either corporations or public officials. While contracts define legal parameters, they can never dissolve moral duty or corporate citizenship.
We must cultivate a national consensus that demands corporate social responsibility and civic courage, recognising that the protection of human dignity and the pursuit of national equity are shared obligations. The phrase must no longer serve as a shield for corporate detachment; instead, it must become a rallying cry for every citizen to demand a future where resource wealth never comes at the expense of national dignity and shared justice.
