Dear Editor,
I refer to a letter in the Stabroek News written by Christopher Ram under the caption ‘Serious questions remain about the LCDS including the wisdom of putting Norway funds into the Amaila project’ in its issue of April 11.
What serious questions remain about the LCDS and the wisdom of putting Norway funds into the Amaila project? Mr Ram definitely has absolutely nothing to complain about the LCDS and the Amaila project and in his frustration at being defeated by Norway he is now hell-bent on stopping their implementation. But Mr Ram will fail in his agenda.
Norway knows better and is aware that people like Mr Ram exist in the society whose objective is to destroy and not to build, which was clearly seen in the eight-point letter written by a loose political grouping calling itself ‘civil society’ to the Norwegian government calling for a delay in funding the implementation of the LCDS. Mr Ram is a member of this so called civil society grouping.
Defeated and ignored by Norway Mr Ram is frustrated and is now attacking the Amerindians of Guyana and claiming indirectly that they should not receive benefits under the LCDS, since “the LCDS is a country project not an ethnic initiative.” Mr Ram has exposed his opposition to the social and economic development of Guyana’s indigenous people. He is correct when he said that “Amerindians simply sit back and ask when is the money [from Norway] coming?”
The fact of the matter is that Amerindian villages generally support Guyana’s LCDS and are eager to participate in the fight against catastrophic global climate change to save our planet. This is what Mr Ram and ‘civil society’ are unable to digest. So the Amerindian communities have a right to ask, “when is the money coming”?
Amerindian land titling is a costly exercise and for Amerindian communities to participate in the LCDS their lands will have to be titled and demarcated. A fraction of Norwegian funds will be used for this purpose. Mr Ram should study the LCDS document, the MOU and the joint concept note signed between Norway and Guyana in Fairview Village on November 9, 2011. Mr Ram is also at sea where the costs for Amerindian land titling, demarcation and extension are concerned.
Can AFC Leader Mr Khemraj Ramjattan and Dr Bulkan state if they are in agreement with the negative comments made by Mr Ram against the Amerindian peoples in his letter.
The Government of Guyana, after conducting an open international tender process contracted Synergy Holdings to design and build the main access road to the Amaila Hydro Power facility and to clear vegetation for the transmission line between the Bartica-Potaro Road and the hydropower site. Mr Ram is against Synergy Holdings getting the road contract and is mounting petty claims about the performance of the company.
But he is a member of the political opposition in Guyana and will oppose everything the government is doing for the people. His claims about the LCDS, the Amaila project and Synergy Holdings are basically political and therefore lack objectivity.
What is this big and useless noise Mr Ram is making about the Vaitarna company? The fact is that the company will have to comply with the forest laws of our country and be consistent with the obligations of Guyana’s LCDS.
Mr Ram accuses the government of not being transparent. How did he get on the board of Transparency Institute (Guyana) Inc when he is a known political opponent of the government? Certainly his neutrality and objectivity at the board level must be questioned, hence the justifiable call by the Government of Guyana for the cleansing of the board.
Mr Ram should stop fooling or misleading the Guyanese public and the international community that the group of which he is a member and that wrote to Norway to delay funding for Guyana’s LCDS is a civil society group.
It is not, since it comprises known anti-government political activists who will be contesting the upcoming 2011 general elections.
On this basis the claims by this political grouping in relation to Guyana’s LCDS can never be intellectually constructive, but are destructive and intended to gain cheap political mileage against the government for the upcoming elections. But this so called civil society grouping of which Mr Ram is a member has committed political suicide and now ceases to exist.
Yours faithfully,
Peter Persaud
