The Weekday-Crowd Anomaly Deserves Answers

The Weekday-Crowd Anomaly Deserves Answers

OPINION BY: Staff Writer

The Government’s Model Village consultations have produced an unmistakable political image: large, enthusiastic crowds gathered across the country to hear President Irfaan Ali, Cabinet members and senior officials outline plans and receive concerns from residents.

Public consultation is necessary. Citizens should have access to the people and institutions that make decisions affecting their homes, land, livelihoods, communities and futures. No fair-minded observer should object to Government going into communities and listening.

But the scale of the turnout—and, more importantly, the timing of these events—raises questions that cannot be dismissed by photographs, applause or celebratory press releases.

These are not weekend gatherings or evening town halls. They have largely been convened during ordinary working hours, when thousands of Guyanese are expected to be at offices, construction sites, farms, shops, factories, schools, public agencies, markets and private businesses. Yet substantial crowds have appeared, stayed for extended periods and engaged the President and Cabinet.

That is the anomaly.

Civil-society organisations understand the basic arithmetic of public participation. If one wants workers, parents, students, small-business people and ordinary citizens to attend a public forum, meeting, protest or demonstration, the event is normally arranged after the workday or on a weekend. The GenZ protest scheduled for 4:30 p.m. is an obvious example. Its timing is not accidental; it recognises that people must first complete their work obligations before they can exercise their civic rights.

Why then are state events capable of producing massive weekday crowds while independent civic initiatives must carefully accommodate people’s work schedules to secure even modest participation?

That question is neither mischievous nor partisan. It is a question of transparency, labour-market reality, institutional integrity and fairness.

No one should leap to the conclusion that every person at a Model Village event is unemployed, paid to attend, instructed to attend or politically mobilised. Crowds cannot, by themselves, establish any of those claims. Many people may be self-employed, retired, unemployed, underemployed, on shift work, conducting informal business, on leave, between jobs, or simply willing to sacrifice several hours to bring an issue directly to the attention of the President and Cabinet.

But those possibilities do not remove the need for explanation. They sharpen it.

If persons are taking unpaid time from work to attend, then the economic cost falls on households already managing the pressures of food, transportation, rent, utilities and other living expenses. If workers are being released with pay, particularly in the public sector, then taxpayers deserve to know the extent of that release and its cost. If private-sector employees are absent during productive hours, employers facing recruitment and labour-retention difficulties have a legitimate interest in knowing whether their workforce is being disrupted by state-sponsored daytime events.

And if attendance is facilitated—through public-sector release time, transportation, community networks, contractors, beneficiary groups, state agencies or political structures—then that too should be openly disclosed. Transparency does not weaken a Government that is confident in its public support. It strengthens the credibility of the process.

There is a second and still more troubling issue.

The roadshows have also become a venue for citizens to raise routine grievances: housing matters, land concerns, drainage, roads, employment, licences, welfare, community development and services that should ordinarily fall within the remit of ministries, regional administrations, neighbourhood democratic councils, municipal bodies and statutory agencies.

It may be politically effective for a minister or senior official to solve a problem in front of a crowd. But it is not good governance for citizens to believe that a travelling Cabinet is their most reliable pathway to administrative relief.

A functioning state does not require people to wait for the President’s motorcade, abandon a workday and stand in a crowd to obtain answers on matters that should be handled through permanent institutions. Citizens should be able to submit a complaint, receive acknowledgement, know which agency is responsible, obtain a timeline, monitor action and appeal delays or failures.

If a Model Village consultation is the only time an unresolved problem receives attention, then the roadshow is revealing the weakness of the institutions it is meant to complement.

The Government should therefore answer plainly:

◊ Why were so many consultations held during regular working hours rather than through a mix of evenings, weekends and after-work sessions?

◊ What was the verified attendance at each event, and how long did persons remain?

◊ Were public servants granted time away from work, and was that time paid?

◊ Were ministries, regional bodies, NDCs, contractors, state agencies, community groups or programme beneficiaries asked to encourage or facilitate attendance?

◊ Was transport, food, reimbursement, per diem, priority service or any other form of material support provided?

◊ How many persons attended with individual grievances rather than to discuss the Model Village programme itself?

◊ Which agencies had responsibility for those grievances before they reached the Cabinet roadshow?

◊Will Government publish an anonymised record of concerns raised, the responsible agency, the promised action, the deadline and the eventual result?

The Bureau of Statistics must also help clarify the broader labour-market picture. Headline unemployment figures alone cannot settle the question raised by large weekday crowds. The country needs regular, accessible data on underemployment, labour-force participation, informal employment, discouraged workers, working poverty and regional differences in employment opportunities.

Employers, too, have a perspective that should not be ignored. If the country faces a labour shortage in key industries, there must be some accounting of the productive hours lost when sizeable numbers of employees attend daytime public events.

The Government cannot celebrate full crowds while businesses quietly absorb disruptions, unless it is prepared to demonstrate that no such disruption occurred.

This is not an argument against consultation. It is an argument for consultation that respects the time, income and working lives of citizens—and for institutions that work every day, not only when the Cabinet arrives.

Government events should not be immune from the standards of accountability expected of civil society, private enterprise or any other public-facing institution. If civil society must schedule demonstrations and meetings after working hours to permit ordinary Guyanese to participate, then Government should explain how it secures remarkable weekday participation and at what cost.

The crowds may indeed reflect public enthusiasm. They may also reflect unmet needs, unequal access to public institutions, carefully facilitated mobilisation, or a labour market that is weaker and more precarious than official narratives suggest.

The public is entitled to clarity—not speculation, not slogans, and not staged impressions of success.