Lindeners were last evening urged to maintain the protests in the town until the government meets their demands, even as residents complained that they were under siege by Joint Services forces.
Today, residents are set to be back in the street to continue the protest, which began on July 18 over a hike in the electricity rate and escalated with the death of three men shot after police opened fire on protestors.
The government will not be addressing issues that are fuelling the four-week-old protest in Linden action unless normalcy is returned, presidential advisor Gail Teixeira said on Monday.
While most of the day was relatively quiet in the town yesterday, residents of Wismar continued to report hearing shots ringing out and a Wismar Housing Scheme Extension resident, Randy Tello, was rushed to the Linden Hospital Complex after he was reportedly shot. The circumstances surrounding the man’s shooting and the extent of his injuries were unclear up to press time.
“This place is suddenly like a battlefield where the sound of gunshot is music to the ears,” said one resident. Others, especially in the One Mile, Block 22, Wisroc and Wismar Housing Scheme communities, also reported hearing shots.
Meanwhile, residents of the Wismar community, which accounts for the vast majority of residents of Linden, have signalled that they have no intention of discontinuing their protest action unless their initial demands of the government are met.
Regional leaders, including Regional Chairman Sharma Solomon, held a string of community meetings in the town yesterday to determine the residents’ position on the continuation of the protest action and to bring them up to date on the developments up to last Friday, when Joint Services moved into the town.
At the last meeting, held at Amelia’s Ward, residents were urged not to leave the struggle up to those at Wismar alone. “Amelia’s Ward, you got to make a statement, ‘It’s not life as usual.’ And that means that we have to go back to where we were.
This is not a Wismar struggle. It’s a struggle of you too,” Member of Parliament Vanessa Kissoon told residents to a loud roar of agreement. “We ain’t giving up the Demerara River because it belongs to we,” Kissoon added, saying that for too long Linden has been suffering and it is time that it comes to an end.
Persons who were claiming to be representatives of the business community came in for heavy criticism at the meeting. “We ain’t got no business community representing we… we got elected leaders who representing we,” said Leon Barrett, a local businessman who was one of the speakers at the meeting.
