Freddie Kissoon column --- M & M Snackette, the GRA and Eric Phillips

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Freddie Kissoon column

M & M Snackette, the GRA and Eric Phillips
Kaieteur News, 11 June 2007

Yesterday morning I invited my wife to an early breakfast. For no
particular reason I suggested the M & M Snackette at the front of the
Harbour Bridge. I guess the reason must have been that I had stopped
there with the family on Saturday night and the barbecue was
delectable. So at the back of my mind was the food at M &M Snackette.
While having my cassava balls, I spread the papers out to read. There
was this letter by Eric Phillips accusing me of what, I don't know.

Phillips is the new kid on the block; a combination of all that is
negative in the Channel 9 talk-show hosts and CN. Sharma. What a
combination! More on Phillips this week.

After completing my breakfast, the owner of M &M Snackette asked to
speak to me. This small businessman has complained to me that the
Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) is pressuring him to have a computerized
receipt system because the GRA is insisting that he earns more than ten
million dollars a year.

There are so many troubling aspects of this persistent enquiry of the
GRA. As someone that finds tax evasion a horrendous moral outrage that
is one of the worst manifestations of criminal behaviour in this
country, I applaud the efforts of the GRA to go after tax cheats. I
support the implementation of VAT.

In the end however, the small business is the one that is bullied by
state institutions that are afraid of confronting the powerful forces
that they have to come up against. So they try to achieve social
respect from the nation by claiming that they are carrying out their
constitutional mandate.

This accusation of mine led the executive director of the Environmental
Protection Agency to write both independent dailies to rebut my story
that I carried in one of my columns earlier that EPA officers are going
around looking for small, bottom house entrepreneurs to bend them into
confirmation with EPA rules that are incongruous with the nature of our
economy.

You can count on your fingers the number of expansive investments
Guyana gets to keep the EPA busy. So the EPA is kept occupied by going
around to little guys who make a few chairs for a living under their
bottom house to question them about where the dust is going and if they
know that their staple machine makes a noise that affects the
neighbours.

For over a century, Georgetowners have grown up with these self-made
entrepreneurs eking out a living under the bottom house or in the yard.

The truth is, I never, and I repeat, I never bought chairs for my
former home in Hadfield Street or my present home from the store. Our
chairs were always bought from bottom house furniture-makers.

In our Hadfield Street home, our television stand was bought from two
guys who “hustle” a living up the road from us. This is the life of
small West Indian tradesmen. Up comes this European imposition, the
EPA, and now the roadside vulcanizer has to get air conditioning unit.

If the Europeans and Americans want us to have standards like their
society then they have to create the conditions that would allow for
the distribution of wealth.

To think we have an EPA but our only university did not have a fume
hood (a protective face gear) in the labs to protect science students
from gaseous inhalations. Chemistry lecturer, Dr. Anand Daljeet, had to
lead a delegation to the President (four years ago) before the
equipment was bought.

What is the EPA doing about the hazards of students working in UG labs?
Right now, the entire staff of the Faculty of Social Sciences has
refused to work in their offices because of asbestos. Their have been
four deaths over the past there years of cancer; all have been workers
in that faculty. The press was there to hear the plight of these UG
staff members but where is the EPA.

The GRA is guilty of the same bullyism. The M&M Snackette sells cassava
and potato balls, dhall puri and related items. It is a small business,
the type you find dotted all over the West Indian landscape.

Let us assume that one day the eyes of the GRA will fall upon tiny
operations like M&M Snackette but that will be years from now because
look at the monster businesses that are escaping the net of the GRA. We
can start with Barama. Have the GRA officers visited Barama with the
same frequency with which they have touched down at M&M Snackette? The
GRA cannot touch Barama.

Has the GRA found the Toolsie Persaud files? Doesn't the GRA have an
obligation to inform the citizenry on the state of the investigation
into these missing files? Funny how a society's mind can be small! We
see a plethora of letters in the newspaper protesting corporal
punishment, legalization of homosexual behaviour, shocking photographs
on the front pages of the newspapers, noise nuisance, clogged drains,
among a host of other social ills which I support.

But not one single letter-writer has written to the media to express
his concern that in the heart of the society, yes in the heart of the
society - the revenue collection system, files could go missing. Isn't
poverty-reduction based on the extent to which we collect taxes?

So the GRA wants M&M Snackette to have a computerized system so they
can check the receipts. Alright fair enough. But why the M&M outlet and
not the lawyers and the doctors? This writer knows of a law firm that
makes hundreds of millions of dollars. Here is an interesting story.

A leading member of this law firm was offered a Cabinet post. He agreed
but asked that his emoluments be close to what he makes from his legal
business. The PPP leadership got a fit when they heard his price. The
firm has no computer system. This writer is aware of a particular
prominent attorney that makes more than ten million dollars a year. Why
haven't the GRA officers visited him?

Here is another intriguing story about the bullyism of the GRA that the
Guyanese people should not put up with. Businessman AAA sold a property
to businessman BBB for two million American dollars. Yes, two million
US dollars. Businessman AAA reported to the GRA that he lost on the
sale (meaning of course that the GRA lost too, meaning that the country
lost money too).

He then built another mansion that is worth more than two million US
dollars. I saw the file of this story. Let the GRA rebut it. The GRA is
a coward. It goes about looking for importers at the wharves who are
smuggling sardines rather than pursuing the sharks that are eating up
this country.

My advice to the M&M owner was to ignore the GRA and tell the officers
to go and collect from the criminals that are robbing this country.