Dear Editor,
I wish to follow through with my promise of reminding the PPP what I did to lift Linden out of the quagmire it was left in after 23 years of deprivation and marginalization.
Let me start by reminding Jagdeo and his cohorts that during and shortly after the PPP’s reign in Guyana, Linden was largely called a “Ghost Town” across social media and that changed after my elevation to its Chief Citizen. I disagreed with and took umbrage at such a low classification of my birthplace, hence I used every opportunity to change such views. The PPP were nevertheless comfortable with the declining state of Linden based on their “Jagdeo-ism” theory of starve the town to force the people into submission and supplication. It was their barbaric way of cementing their hold on political governance and breaking the PNC’s main stronghold to weaken their chances of returning to government.
Linden was specially targeted and punished for its strong support to the PNC in many ways such as classification, symbolization, discrimination, dehumanization, polarization and I can go on and on as I think of it. The morale of our youth was at an all-time low but our embattled people were weathering the political storm with resilience.
The PPP took away the Toll Booth which was one of the more viable means of getting much needed revenue into the township and my council and I wasted no time in bringing it back against much fight from their political implants. I lobbied for an increased subvention, support from NGO’s, government agencies and the private sector to restore a more active commerce in Linden.
Under the PPP several attempts were made to make Linden a national and international “dumpsite” but it was rejected by the people who were already tired of garbage around the place. Garbage collection was a sore point and many residents had to burn their solid waste or pay for such service but were better served under my stewardship. The municipality had one tractor and one “half dead truck” operational, while two small compactor trucks were broken down and left to rot. Our council immediately got the truck in better working order, received a skip bin tractor from central government and repaired one of the compactor trucks. We also placed skip bins around the main areas to ease littering and improved the sanitation work force with better equipment, increased salaries and employed a works supervisor to bring stability to that municipal service. As Mayor, I left office with two new compactor trucks being procured and put into operation and I personally lobbied Bosai Minerals for a large new compactor truck which is already in Linden and will soon be serving the community. Linden was named the cleanest town in Guyana by a group of journalists taken on tour across Guyana by the Guyana Tourism Authority in the middle of 2017, one year after the PPP left it in a dirty state.
I am aware I cannot take up much of the editor’s space in this letter, but I will surely outline other developments in Linden in round three in this battle of facts vs. lies, Holland vs. the Jagdeo PPPs.
Yours faithfully,
Carwyn Holland
