Dear Editor,
The proposed electricity increase in 2012 for Linden/Region 10 that was aborted following the death of three people is clearly resting heavily on the chest of the government. Every Minister who visits Linden cannot avoid commenting on it – they always choke on it. For my part I’m being very forthright; the implementation of such an increase bringing us on par with folks in Georgetown and elsewhere will ‘black out’ Linden! A substantial part of Linden/Region 10 would not be able to pay such an exorbitant cost. It would mean we would have to reserve the use of electricity for Sundays only. To pay bills one must not only have a source of income but moreso an adequate income, and that is definitely not the case for the large majority. A cursory check will reveal the sad reality of unemployment, underemployment and low pay, and you wonder the reason for beating the drum of disparity with what folks are paying elsewhere. Isn’t it for the very same reason – high electricity costs – that poor people in Georgetown and elsewhere are losing their lives, having been reduced to stealing it? It is so unfairly beyond their reach.
Oh! let me make haste to say that I’m 101% in agreement that Linden residents ought to behave much more responsibly and ought to be more conservative and considerate in their use of electricity at all times. And by the way, I think that government ministers ought to stop being brazenly snickering by comparing their paying of bills with that of everyday people – “I too have to pay my bills.” Yes! they ought to; their earnings more than take care of that, and they are not footing their bills simply because of being more responsible and decent than the poor. It comes over like a mockery when they make such comparisons, and they should stop it. With adequate earnings the working-class man will most certainly honour his responsibilities; he knows this. It’s the way of civilised society where services are paid for through various forms of taxation which the people are obligated to pay so that the government treasury keeps afloat, along with revenue from our natural resources, as they are exploited.
Government doesn’t give, it takes, and what sometimes seems a generous gesture by a government is ultimately the returns that were taken from taxpayers in the first place that are being given back in another form, often when the economy does well – like with VAT. It is not a gift or personal hand-out by the president/ministers. Create conditions for people to grow and they will certainly do what is required of them. Yes, things have changed; yes, there was a time when we got electricity dog-cheap, but that wasn’t an additional burden on the company anyway, and it was also a concession and inducement for attracting workers into some intolerably hazardous conditions.
Government/ministers now say in a most abrupt and callous way, “Duh time done gone, this is no mo’ a company town,” as if the turbulent years of our contribution – the power supply to various parts of Guyana at no cost was nothing, hence the moaning and groaning persistently about the high cost of subsiding electricity in Linden /Region 10, trying to make us feel guilty, unreasonable and dishonest. Tell me what is wrong with incorporating into the deal that a portion of power supply be granted to residents as it was in the beginning? You don’t abandon tradition just like that; which industrial enterprise goes into any nation to amass capital and is allowed to trample tradition? But this ‘electricity’ remains our only saving grace at this point in time, for there is nothing more, repeat nothing more, left intact from the glory days of bauxite; nothing from all those battles won with the sweat, blood and sinews of the bauxite workers in spite of their colossal contribution deep from within the heart of the mines.
Editor, do you know that there is nothing erected in honour of bauxite workers in Linden or Region 10? Sooner or later no doubt we will be blotted out and forgotten! But we paid our dues to this entire nation like a caring father, and it is only the absolutely ignorant, totally dishonest and the unconscionable in the community who would say ‘nay.’ And we are not craving any special favours, just that we recognise what is.
Let me see if I can fit Mr Odinga Lumumba’s example in as an analogy. On the NCN Linden programme ‘Meet the Minister’ he asked Lindeners not to abandon the PPP, since much was done for the people and the town. He likened it to a faithful father/husband who took care of every aspect of his responsibilities without fail and was an exemplary father in the eyes of his family; then he posed the question: “Now if that man came home one night, one night drunk, would you walk out and leave him?”
Yours faithfully,
Frank Fyffe
