Yesu Persaud is disappointed to have missed breakfast with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Persaud, Managing Director of the Demerara Distillers Limited in Georgetown, Guyana, is one of the winners of the Pravasi Samman awards this year. President A P J Abdul Kalam will confer the awards on the concluding day of the 4th Pravasi Bharatiya Divas in Hyderabad on Monday.
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Persaud, who arrived on Friday from London, was told a day before his arrival that he was going to receive the award. Early Saturday morning, the first day of the conference, he found an invitation from the prime minister for a breakfast at 8.30 am. The invitation had been sent to his hotel late on Friday.
Eager to attend, Persaud was ready to leave before 7 am, for the breakfast organised at the Andhra Pradesh Governor's House. But instead, the liaison officer seconded to him by the government took him the Hitex Centre, the venue of the Divas, some 25 kilometers out of the city.
And by the time they realized their mistake the breakfast was long over.
"With a big conference like this, organization is always a problem," Persaud told rediff.com, at the conference center on Sunday, trying to hide his intense disappointment.
"Organization means that people should be allotted duties, told what is expected of them, and they should perform, and held accountable."
Explaining the goof up, he said, "Yesterday morning, the Prime Minister had a breakfast session. I was one of the invitees, because I am one of the awardees this year. I got the invitation early in the morning. I did not mind that. The invitation had come the night before, but the guy only gave it to me in the morning."
"They told me to leave at 7, and I would be there before 8 am. I was in the car at 10 to 7. I told my liaison officer that we are going for breakfast with the prime minister. Do you know this address? He said yes."
But instead, "He brought me here. Then we went looking all over the place, asking where the breakfast was being held. By the time we found someone who told us that it was not here, it was 9.30. So there was no way I could have gone. This was an event which I would have loved to attend," he said ruefully.
"So what I intend to do when I get back to Guyana is write a letter to the prime minister apologizing for my absence. I have already told Krishna Kumar, Secretary, Ministry for Overseas Indians, who asked me why I had not turned up and I said sorry, this is where your man brought me."
So that is communication. Here was a man who did not know what he was doing. He did not know the place himself. That is terrible. Horrible!
