Dear Editor,
I refer to three letters in the Stabroek News. The first letter on September 11th from Mr. Clement Rohee makes a few good points and exposes the fact that the Trinidadians did not treat our citizens as comrades when they were top dog and we were a Heavily Indebted Poor Country. They tried to stop our efforts to export beef to Caricom, they treated us like mendicants at Piarco airport etc. The next day a letter from Mr. Roshan Khan urged us to remember that doctors from here were denied jobs in T&T because the said Trinidadians have consistently denied Guyanese work in T&T since T&T was giving their nationals preference for jobs. First of all I perceive that most doctors operating in T&T have qualifications which include Member of the Royal College of Physicians or Surgeons MRCP, MRCS. The accredited British qualifications. And I don’t know if in his rush to write the letter he did not overlook the fact that to practise medicine in T&T you must have higher qualifications than are required in Guyana, that’s not an indictment on them, it’s an indictment on us to allow some very poorly trained Guyanese doctors in Cuba, India and China on an unsuspecting public here in Guyana. Furthermore, when exactly did they decide that if a job exists in T&T that they were obligated to give the job to a Guyanese in preference to a Trinidadian? Which country’s government has such a rule and expects to get reelected?
The other letter from the Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry makes a totally different set of points and recommendations i.e. that the Trinidadians have a very thriving private sector and our Chamber of Commerce is welcoming them to invest here, and in addition we could reap a special benefit from tapping into the Trinidadian white-collar workers of their oil industry to help us with ours. Given our unprepared situation here, where we clearly lack the capacity to monitor and regulate the oil industry for Guyanese, I see this as a very persuasive argument in favour of our collaborating with them, since I for one accept how vulnerable we are in this situation where we are completely outgunned by EXXON. In fact, I am astonished that the Trinis were not more involved than they have been up to this time in our interaction with the Extractors. I want to say here that I have nothing at all against EXXON, they are doing what they are supposed to do, to get the best deal for their shareholders, if we send people ‘who nah ready yet’ to negotiate with them that’s not their fault its ours. So, the few persons who think that I have some sort of grouse against EXXON it is not so. People have been prospecting for oil out there for decades, but they are the ones experienced enough to find it, so I take my hat off to them and offer my thanks, the rest is up to us.
Speaking for myself, as fellow members of CARICOM and not overlooking the ills of the past, if it is possible to use Trinidadian expertise to establish institutions which can lessen the impact of the resource curse, we should use them. Government to Government, since whatever else may have happened in Trinidad, the oil industry built up the island over more than a century, which is miles ahead of the development we can see here, it is to their credit that unlike so many other countries the oil money went where it was supposed to go, to the people of T&T.
I for one would support using them to help us to reinforce our institutions to deal with the tsunami of revenue income we are soon to experience, and it would cost less than bringing in a full team from further abroad, we must always retain the right to hire the best we can afford in the oil industry abroad, and I believe that getting them to enter a joint venture with us to set up their now closed oil refinery here is a good plan. I don’t think that I am in favour of taking our oil there for refining, I support fully our refining here. Remember Editor that the refinery employed 1800 Trinidadians and in time it could employ a similar amount of Guyanese here. But to refine and add value to the oil here, would not only make us more revenue from our share of the oil, it would make us the new economic powerhouse in the Caribbean where we have always, since independence, been the underdogs.
Yours faithfully,
Tony Vieira
