Dear Editor,
All development is based on production and growth, that is, the gathering and application of resources to make things for people to use. We develop when these activities are efficient and profitable and provide us with the means to eat better, live in better houses, increase our health standards and wear better clothing. For some it is the capacity to live out the ideals enshrined in our values and morals. It is not achieved by burdening a people with an increased and unjustified cost of living. Among other things, Mr Lincoln Lewis’s letter in SN dated April 18 captioned ‘The proposed merger involving the two Linden electricity companies will increase poverty in Linden’ details a number of actions undertaken by this government which inhibit this community’s ability to grow and develop. It is a recurring theme in Guyanese history, that is, the dispossession of Afrikans and Afrikan communities of the opportunities and resources that they have accumulated. The locations and time are different, the story the same. Victoria, Plaisance, Den Amstel, and Lichfield like others, were once private property not public “villages.” Their owners lost the right to those properties through a process of deprivation similar to one we here in Linden have faced over the past two decades.
Lincoln points to this process of dispossession and deprivation in the case of Linden, through (1) the privatization of the bauxite company without compensation to the community for their “sweat equity”; (2) the disbanding of the pension plan; and (3) the continual attempts at trying to “nationalize” the LUSCSL thus taking way from the owners of the co-op their right to their property. Lindeners lose twice under these circumstances. When we lost the stock of physical capital called the bauxite company and financial resources called the pension plan we also lost the streams of future income, which these resources would return had we maintained ownership over them. These streams of income are the life-blood of prosperity and well-being and help people to afford an increased cost of living. The ability to afford increases in the cost of living is not facilitated by shrinking the people’s capacity to earn while increasing the cost of living. The dispossession of a people or town of its stock of resources and the incomes from those stocks is the root of their destruction. This is not about compassion; it is one example of the dispassionate use of economics. It is no wonder then that statistics reveal that in the pockets of the town’s population 2 out of 3 children are living in poverty. In the 15-35 age group 1 in every 1.3 women with vulnerabilities are affected by poverty and 1 in every 1.5 among the elderly is hypertensive.
This cold and calculating debilitating execution of economic planning to a people’s detriment creates the need for greater vigilance and carefulness from our elected representatives and our leaders. We, our leaders and elected representatives must be held to a high degree of accountability for responsiveness to, responsibility for and awareness of the uniqueness of the issues facing our communities and educate ourselves on the justifications for holding these out as issues. Much to their credit and a demonstration of their maturity, Messrs Granger and Roopnaraine visited the town on Friday and left with a better understanding of why the “proposed” increases in electricity tariffs is a non-starter for us. The government is still to accord Linden that
courtesy. But theses visits are not a sufficient condition for the town to climb out of its depression. The town needs a new cadre of brave, open-minded leaders in all of the political camps, the church, business, health, education, agriculture and entertainment; in short, we need a new consciousness, men and women who can be loyal to their partisan interest but with an understanding that theirs is just a part of the whole; people who understand the dynamics of the new international order, and the region’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and the threats relative to the new demands; men and women who understand the processes of economic development, the region and the town’s history and the how that development has been affected by the history. We need grounded men and women with vision, commitment and a wholesome spirituality, men and women who will breathe new life into the region and its people and take it forward and upward. The stakes for this region are high.
At the moment Lindeners control none of the major economic resources in the region or town and our human resources are depleted from outward migration as people search for a livelihood.
Yet per capita no region is richer than this Region 10. Our economic activities are limited to fronting for businesses in Georgetown, petty trading and small manufacturing, unemployment, underemployment and office employment and other non-productive work.
It is this condition and the transfer of income and wealth to other economic communities which make Mr Hinds‘s suggestion that we take advantage of the construction of the Amaila Falls, the expansion of Bosai, and the transshipment of woods, among others, ridiculous, as his government has over the past nineteen years dispossessed Lindeners and continues to attempt to dispossess Lindeners of financial and other resources.
We have demonstrated that the consequences for our leaders and elected officials will be dire if they misrepresent the issue and do not consult us.
We look forward to the outcome of today‘s proceedings in Parliament.
Yours faithfully,
J Adams
