Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice) is accusing the government of sidelining the local leadership in the decision-making process.
The accusation was levelled yesterday during a press conference hosted by the PNCR and attended by Regional Chairman Deron Adams, Regional Member of Parliament Jermaine Figueira and Eleze Benjamin Hall, Chairman of the Public Works Committee of Region 10.
Adams said that government ministers and officials are going into the region and conducting meetings, outreaches and other activities without informing the Regional Democratic Council or the relevant NDCs. He said that the region is being starved of resources by the government since it is dominated by Opposition members in leadership roles.
“While the rest of Guyana may not be familiar with the divisive and vile tactics that the PPP has employed to ensure that they punish the people of Region 10 and Linden for simply exercising their franchise to elect the people that they are certain can bring the type of development and quality of life that we desperately need, the people of our Region are acutely attuned to the selfish and divisive politics of the PPP, which has no place in a modern society and is entirely the opposite of the inclusivity and comprehensive development that the People’s National Congress and the APNU+AFC bring to the governance of our people,” Adams said during the press conference.
He said that the government has been consistently placing residents on the breadline by laying them off from entities such as the St. John’s Ambulance Brigade, Patient Care Assistants, and the National Data Management Unit. The Regional Chairman also reference the recent visit of Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo where he promised in excess of 800 temporary jobs for youths in the communities of Region 10 but informed that weeks later, there has been no delivery on that promise.
“The PPP boasted of having trained 184 persons through the Board of Industrial Training in Linden. Having trained them they have created no jobs for them. These are simply nearly 200 more persons that the PPP intends to continue to marginalize and trample since the PPP has no plan to employ them. They have no coherent strategy to ensure that these skills are utilized for national development,” he added.
Adams said that the government has ceased a number of programmes implemented by the former administration that would have benefitted the residents of Region 10. He called for the reinstatement of those programmes challenging the government to “show” that it is serious about development.
He further stated “the government continues its campaign of ignoring the legally elected representatives of the people in many ways, and had it not been for the strong representation and actions of the Councilors of the 9th Regional Democratic Council, this situation would have been totally out of hand by now. Letters on important subjects written to Ministers have been totally ignored, and when the President himself was written to and this was pointed out, he too did not respond.”
The Chairman said that the Regional Democratic Council has been making representation for a Fire Station on the Wismar shore and a four wheel drive fire tender to go into the areas across Linden that the traditional fire tenders are poorly equipped to serve, but it has been meeting up with radio silence from the government.
“I am putting the government on notice that we are aware of these actions and will continue to take the PPP government to task to ensure that good governance prevails,” Adams warned.
