Dear Editor,
African Guyanese represent a large portion of the poor and powerless in Guyana. ACDA notes that President Granger in his recent pre-emancipation address at BV seemed to recognize that African Guyanese are at a disadvantage in the society when he alluded to some of our people always wanting a raise. Our work in our communities has shown us that in most of those instances the request for a raise is to pay for a bus fare to get home or to cook a pot for a household. Things are dread in most African-Guyanese households.
ACDA fully supports the recent proposal of Professor Clive Thomas for the Government to make cash transfers from the revenues it will garner from oil and gas to poor Guyanese households. This will certainly be one way that President Granger and his Government can demonstrate that an effort is being made to reverse some of the economic disadvantages that plague our communities each day.
We encourage the Government also to give effect to the idea of removing the income tax from personal incomes and lowering the corporate tax rates to competitive levels within five years of the commencement of the receipt of oil revenues as a means of encouraging work and industry.
ACDA further calls on President Granger and his Government to consider ceasing all allocations of oil concessions to foreign companies and instead begin to grant these concessions to local Guyanese thereby ensuring that Guyanese are given the opportunity as well to share in the benefits and patrimony of this emerging oil sector
ACDA is prepared to pursue the mobilization of resources both at home and in the diaspora for investment in the sector.
ACDA claims this opportunity as a right that is just especially since the bodies of thousands of our Ancestors lie at the bottom of the oceans of the world a crime that has been described by the United Nations as “the greatest crime against humanity”. The Atlantic Ocean is one of the Oceans in which the Guyana oil concessions now occur.
Yours faithfully,
Sis. Wonetta Jones
Secretary
ACDA
