Dear Editor,
APNU+AFC Member of Parliament Audwyn Rutherford during his 2015 Budget speech in the National Assembly of Guyana made the following remarks: “Budget 2015 brings an end to the neglect of Linden”. As if that ill-informed statement was not enough, the new entrant to the National Assembly continued: “Budget 2015 addresses from the unborn to the deceased.”
The IMC Chairman of the Linden municipality obviously did not read this specific section of the MP’s speech or did not agree with what he said. In comments attributed to the Chairman and carried on page 19 of Stabroek News of September 17, he accused the APNU+AFC government of ignoring Linden. The Chairman no doubt determined that Lindeners had given APNU+AFC enough support at the 2015 general and regional elections and should not be made to wait to start to reap the fruits/commitments made to them by the government. In this regard, he alluded to what he termed “the slow pace with which the government was addressing critical issues facing the municipality including the reopening of the Kara Kara toll booth and benefits for staff and councillors.” As it is with the government, so it is with the municipality: a focus on garnering more revenue and ensuring that elected officials and staff are the first beneficiaries ‒ for them, self comes first?
Then the government pressed the panic button. First President David Granger makes a hurried visit to Linden, for which many were unprepared. The President and regional officials seem to have had two distinct agendas. I hope that the hundreds of thousands of dollars of foodstuff and refreshments at Watooka found needy beneficiaries as President Granger seemed in a hurry to leave Region 10 and obviously could not accommodate a visit to that guest house.
Government officials from the Ministry of Communities next visited with obvious clear instructions that must have had the benefit of the input and blessings of the President.
The Linden municipality was engaged and directed to procure the services of some 150 persons (obviously APNU+AFC activists and supporters) to be employed in clean-up activities within the municipality ‒ a replica of a similar project for the city council? Each worker will be paid $30 000 per month for working 4 hours per day while the foremen will receive $40 000 per month. The number of workers will be doubled during 2015 to 300. So much for our Amerindian CSOs. They are not a priority on the APNU+AFC agenda. They do not even have a conscience.
The strange unexplained decisions continued. The PPP/C councillor who sat on the Regional Tender Board was replaced for reasons unknown, and the Regional Chairman who chairs the RDC Finance Committee (an RDC Standing Commit-tee) now also chairs the Regional Tender Board. Reminds you of ministers of the government being identified to chair state boards? What an anomaly.
With the approval of the government, no doubt, most of the community development councils (CDCs) democratically elected by residents of several communities of Region 10, during the tenure of office of the PPP/C were autocratically removed and replaced by known handpicked APNU+AFC people. Mind you, these CDCs were elected by the residents of the specific interested communities through a democratic process facilitated by the PPP/C Director of CDCs, Cde Philomena Sahoye Shury.
I have been trying hard to conceive that perhaps this is part of the methodology of the government to “bring an end to the neglect of Region 10” and perhaps also, it coincides with the hallucinations and hullabaloo of its supporters.
I asked myself the question: Was Region 10 and more specifically Linden indeed neglected? And if so, by which administration? I guessed MP Audwyn Rutherford was too beholden to APNU to accuse them of neglect of Region 10. He must be talking of the PPP/C. And so I traced the work of the PPP/C in Region 10, and more specifically Linden during its government.
When the PPP/C was elected to office in October 1992, there was a situation of high structural unemployment occasioned primarily by reduced demand for bauxite and depressed prices for this commodity In Linden. The social sector was run down. Infrastructure was almost non-existent. High unemployment rates had been the order of the day under the PNC. Then cometh the PPP/C.
A journey can only be measured from where it began. The people of Linden and indeed Guyana were plunging rapidly in October 1992 and it was the PPP/C that halted that decline. I ask mature, genuine, honest people of Linden who were around in 1992 at a time when over 50% of the Guyanese people lived below the poverty line: isn’t their life better off than in 1992?
The PPP/C government pumped huge subsidies into the bauxite industry to safeguard the jobs of persons who were not necessarily supporters of the PPP/C government or the PPP, and this at a time when the state owned bauxite company was in the doldrums. The PNC had brought in the Australian Group called MinProc to close the industry, but the PPP/C kept it alive to keep the jobs of the people, most of whom hailed from Linden, Kwakwani and Ituni. In fact, the PPP/C has invested so much in Linden over the past 22 years that we have been accused of pampering the town. Our investment in Linden has been viewed by many as too costly and a possible cause of some loss of loyal constituents. We have faced criticisms of overly subsidizing Linden electricity tariffs as against other areas where the cost was much higher.
There is noticeable evidence of development today; noticeable improvement in terms of the extent, quality and access to quality education and health care in Region 10 and more specifically Linden. And among the ten administrative regions, Region 10 per capita of population stands out with noticeably high achievement in the education and health sectors. Linden has been part of the achievement of universal primary education and the reduction of child mortality and improvement in maternal health as set out in the Millennium Development Goals. It all happened under the PPP/C.
Additionally, there is noticeable infrastructural expansion in the areas of maintenance and the rehabilitation of roads, bridges, drains, water and electricity in Region 10. Coming out of its company town history also, electricity prices paid by consumers have been 10% and less than what ought to be paid. The PPP/C government subsidy in 2007 was $1.8B and $2.4B in 2012 or $17 000 per household per month in Linden and Kwakwani. This is quite apart from the cost of fuel for Ituni paid for via the RDC. It was $24.14M in 2012.
Other social reform programmes designed to create jobs for the citizens and hence raise their living standards were developed during the PPP/C term in office, viz, the Women of Worth (WOW) Programme; the Linden Economic Advancement Fund (LEAP) from which hundreds of loans were advanced to those who successfully applied. I think it would be accurate to say that many Lindeners did not take advantage of the opportunities offered under the programmes and plans developed and the opportunities created under the PPP/C government. Many Lindeners began to behave as if we owed them something; as if we were duty bound to serve them on a platter whatever they asked for.
I am not suggesting that we reduce material assistance for Linden, but I emphasize that there must be fairness and equity when it comes to the distribution of the nation’s wealth/resources. These are for all Guyanese irrespective of their ethnicity or political affiliation. In this regard Linden or Region 10 is no more important than any of the other nine administrative regions. On a per capita basis, Lindeners have received more assistance from the PPP/C government than most other communities.
The citizens of Region 10 must understand and appreciate that resources allocation is a function of need and availability of the resources, and ability to efficiently manage those resources. In other words, the consideration cannot be about sufficiency of resources but efficiency of use also. Resource allocation must be equitable and fair. Citizens must appreciate also that it is impossible to make one community better off without making some others worse off. These are also factors to be considered.
The PPP/C government did provide resources for similar development in the Amerindian villages and communities situated mostly in the Upper Demerara and Upper Berbice riverain areas; the Kwakwani NDC; Kwakwani Utilities Inc; the Linden municipality; the Linden Electricity Co; and the over 30 community development councils elected by the people of the communities they represented. Assistance to these local authorities was provided primarily through the instrument of the national and regional budgets in the form of subventions and grants to the extent of billions of dollars.
Thousands in Region 10 now own their own homes. The National Drainage and Irrigation Authority was responsible for the clearing of drains across Region 10 from 2010 to 2015. More farming and residential communities were maintained and the number of groups increased from 21 to 36. The main economic activities switched to forestry, mining, quarrying and farming. There is definitely noticeable evidence of improvement. Maybe not as much as the people of Linden would have wished, but the truth is that the PPP/C recognized that there were poor people across Guyana and not just Linden or Region 10.
The PPP/C committed and upheld our moral, social and economic responsibilities as a government of all the people; so much so that unless one is a stranger to the truth and blind to the developments that have taken place in Region 10 and indeed all Guyana under the PPP/C government one would accept that the end to the neglect of Linden came in October 1992. I hope that as the MP peruses this missive he will be awakened from his stupor.
Yours faithfully,
Norman Whittaker
