Dear Editor,
Kashif and Shanghai are businessmen at Linden. I presume that we would all agree that private businesses are run to make a profit and can only be sustained if the returns are satisfactory. These two organizers with the ‘Midas Touch’ have hosted a football tournament for seventeen years and have also recently hosted the Linden Town Week, which has been hailed as the biggest and best. On the surface these are major successes for these two Lindeners who came from the ranks of the ordinary.
However what lies beneath the golden touch and apparent success of these two entrepreneurs is something which must be examined most carefully in the context of the present social and economic structures of a town plagued by poverty and a history of corruption that keeps it from emerging from the abyss of its destitute state.
The history of the Kashif and Shanghai Organization is replete with community support. Lindeners at home and abroad contribute significantly to ensure the success of the tournament.
This is against the backdrop that we have to support such an activity since it can benefit the youths and to a greater extent the community at large. More recently the government came on board with financial support and even other big businesses across the country. Everything is given freely with the understanding that this is helping Linden. I do not think that private businesses should be given grants or handouts without some form of accountability on how the community benefits. I do not believe the Kashif and Shanghai Organization should be an exception. I cannot fathom how a team from Trinidad taking away the monetary award for winning the final game, benefits the community. Let us be clear whether this is a private business or a community support group!
Recently the K&S Organization bought the franchise for the Linden Town Day and promised a financial statement after the activity concluded.
They are about to negotiate to host the 2007, Town Week and the Interim Management Committee Chairman is accusing them of intransigence. The fact is, as shrewd businessmen K&S saw the opportunity to exploit a non-profit venture which was exploited from its inception. There has never been any accountability of the Linden Town Day since it started! The Linden Town Day held in 2005 saw hundreds of Lindeners returning from overseas. It was the biggest of its kind since it started, with the potential to grow regardless of who hosted it.
Kashif told me about seven years ago that the benefit the community got as a spin-off from the tournament was enough. I realized then that the faith we lost in our government organizations at Linden to help us to build our town and help its future, that same faith we entrusted to the ranks of the ordinary amongst us, with the understanding of ‘he who feels it knows it’, seems to have been lost forever.
Yours faithfully,
Norman Browne
Editor’s note
We sent a copy of this letter to Mr. Kashif Mohamed, a Director of Kashif and Shanghai, for his comments and received the following response:
“Norman Browne’s letter adds nothing to his repetitive criticisms of the Kashif and Shanghai Organization. We respond in order to set the records straight rather than out of any real mindfulness of Mr. Browne’s trivia.
What exactly are these ‘significant’ contributions that ‘we make to the Kashif and Shanghai Tournament,’ Mr. Browne? It is the ordinary residents of Linden the rank and file, the ‘regulars’ – not absentee critics like yourself – who are the ‘heart and soul’ of the tournament.
Whatever Mr. Browne’s personal views on private ventures securing ‘grants’ – as he puts it – we are proud of the fact that several of Guyana’s leading business houses – which are certainly not inclined to hitch their reputations to failed and questionable causes – have continued to support the tournament without ever having had reason to question the veracity of the event or the integrity of its organizers. As for the public sector support that we receive we believe that it reflects government’s acknowledgement of the signal contribution that the tournament continues to make to sport and entertainment at the national level.
Mr. Browne’s grouse over the fact that the Trinidad and Tobago team, Joe Public, were the eventual winners of the 2007 finals is as absurd as it is unfortunate. Less than two years ago a Guyana team took the top prize in a similar type of competition in the sister Caricom territory of St. Lucia. Incidentally, Mr. Browne, the Kashif and Shanghai Organization was invited to St. Lucia to help organize that event.
The limitations of space do not allow for detailed itemization of the community contributions that the Kashif and Shanghai Organization has made over the years. I shall, however, make the following four points:
1. We have, over the years made contributions to every spectator sport in Linden and to a number of social and educational causes.
2. Several members of the current outstanding national football team secured attachments with clubs in Trinidad and Tobago through our direct intervention.
3. We undertook, at a cost in excess of $600,000.00, the improved fencing of the main access to the McKenzie Sports Club Ground and the securing of all the entrances to the facility. Further, the existing floodlights at the complex, arguably the best in the country, were installed by government following our intervention.
4. Two years ago, as a gift to some of our friends in the Christian community we financed the construction of the concrete floor at the Victory Assembly of God Church in Silvertown.
The finals of the Kashif & Shanghai Tournament are a major social event in Linden. It generates economic activity from which hotels, boutiques, hairdressers, vendors and various other businesses benefit. It is because we recognize the importance of this event to Linden that we have always resisted to rotate it between Georgetown and Linden.
It was not an accident that Linden Town Week 2006 was ‘the biggest and best ever.’ The success of the event demonstrated that the people of Linden are responsive to motivation. We regret that it does not appear that we will be afforded the opportunity to make an input into the event this year.
We sense that Mr. Browne’s most recent outburst is an attempt to initiate a protracted public discourse on what he perceives to be the shortcomings of our organization. Be informed, Mr. Browne, that we will not enjoin that discourse. Rather, we continue to be inspired and encouraged by the support that we receive from the people of Linden as a whole and from its leaders of distinction like Messrs. Mortimer Mingo, Horace James and others, and from organizations like the Linden Fund, USA and the Linden Economic Advancement Programme (LEAP)”.
