Dear Editor,
The Guyanese diaspora is the most important partner for Guyanese at home to organize, implement, monitor, evaluate, learn and adjust programmes for hunting and resisting corruption.
If corruption is allowed to grow in Guyana, the new oil wealth will become a ‘resource curse’ by denying life-changing benefits for most workers, farmers, the unemployed, the poor and the marginalized, especially among women, youth and seniors. Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. advised: “the world has enough for everyone’s needs, but not for everyone’s greed”.
The great scientist and humanist Albert Einstein warned humanity that “the world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything”. Survivors of the Jewish Holocaust by Nazi Germany advise that, to ensure it never happens again, every person has to pledge that he or she “will not be a perpetrator, a victim or a bystander”. If we are bystanders to corruption, most of us will become victims and accomplices in Guyana’s continuing underdevelopment.
Firstly, let us analyze the Guyanese diaspora. Every year, between 2% and 4% of Guyana’s population emigrates mainly to the USA, Canada and the Caribbean. The emigrants are from all ethnicities, classes, religions, genders and ages including teachers, nurses, students, doctors, academics, business people and skilled labourers. Compared to the size of its population, Guyana has the highest emigration rate and ‘brain drain’ (including 80% of University of Guyana (UG) graduates and at least 40% of graduates from secondary schools and technical institutes).
The diaspora, “Region 11”, is strategically located in major global centres like New York, Toronto and London. At least 550,000 persons are first generation, that is, they were born in Guyana. There is also a second generation who are eligible for Guyanese citizenship because one of their parents was born in Guyana.
In addition to being citizens in their host country, most diaspora continue to be Guyanese citizens with deep and binding ties to Guyana. About 80% of the Guyanese diaspora lives in the USA and Canada, 12.4% lives in Latin America and the Caribbean (Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname, Barbados, Antigua and Barbuda, St. Lucia, St. Maarten, Venezuela and Brazil), 5.9% lives in the United Kingdom and Northern Europe, and 1.7% lives in Australia, Asia and South Africa.
The diaspora has impressive skills and expertise in all levels of education, in health services, in business management and sales, in information and communications technology (IT), in hydro and solar energy, in agriculture, in construction, in mining, in environmental protection, in industrial engineering including in the oil and gas sector, and even in the political arenas of their countries of residence.
This means that the diaspora can contribute enormously to the rapid development of Guyana especially in key priority areas such as power generation, infrastructure, information and communications technology, construction, the environment and the oil and gas industries.
Thankfully, for over 50 years, Guyana has been blessed with an unselfish diaspora that ‘gives back’ by regularly making contributions for community development and poverty reduction, and by transferring knowledge and skills.
Hundreds of school alumni groups, hometown associations and religious organizations donate to schools in the communities where they received their primary and secondary education. Their support includes: school supplies, computers, learning materials, books for libraries, funds for repairing and upgrading school buildings, Univer-sity of Guyana scholarships and academic/teacher training exchanges.
Dozens of groups donate to healthcare. Their support includes: beds and medical equipment for hospitals and clinics, medical missions of doctors and nurses from the USA and Canada to rural and hinterland communities, training programmes for local doctors and nurses in maternal care, mental health and suicide prevention, and financial funds and medical expertise to the Georgetown Public Hospital for maintaining a Burn Unit and improving the Maternity Ward.
Hometown associations, religious organizations and other groups also give their time and money to support community projects, sports clubs, human rights programmes, disaster relief and cultural exchanges.
In addition, financial remittances total an annual average of sixty billion Guyana dollars (GUY$60 Billion); Guyanese-born diaspora tourists spend an annual average of thirty billion Guyana dollars (GUY$30 Billion); investors from the diaspora annually invest about fifty billion Guyana dollars (GUY$50 Billion) to set up businesses in the tourism, mining, agriculture, information and communications technology (IT) and the forestry sectors; the diaspora in the USA, Canada and the Caribbean purchases fresh and processed food exports from Guyana that annually total about five hundred million Guyana dollars (GUY$500,000,000).
As Guyanese, we should follow the advice of Mahatma Gandhi: “we must be the change we want to see”. At home and in the diaspora, we have to empathize and “walk in each other’s shoes” by positively discussing our feelings and perceptions so that we can overcome any suspicions and resentment of each other, and move forward.
Many in the diaspora feel guilty about leaving the country. They know that many Guyanese at home admire them but, at the same time, they feel resented, distrusted and that they are seen as just ‘cash cows’.
On the other hand, many Guyanese at home feel that many persons from the diaspora ‘talk down’ to them, act like know-it-alls, and see them as inefficient and under-qualified. They believe that the diaspora want special privileges and are only coming back now for their personal benefit because Guyana is moving ahead.
For the near future, the main challenges for the diaspora are how: [1] to better understand the real complexities in administering and governing under-developed countries; [2] to better coordinate and balance their support across Guyana for more equitable development in hinterland, rural and urban communities; [3] to involve many of the younger diaspora generation in the leadership of their organizations; and [4] to organize, mobilize, coordinate and unite the Guyanese diaspora by including all ethnicities, classes, genders and religions.
The next letter will explore the measures that the diaspora and Guyanese at home can employ together to hunt for and resist corruption.
Yours faithfully,
Geoffrey Da Silva
