Dear Editor,
First, it was “high”, then “very high” and next “hard”. For those who thought that those descriptions coming out of the far expanses of Guyana have to do with good local rum, I regret having to bring up short: it is nothing so exciting. Certainly, not what generates the mouthwatering, but the mind emptying, only the mouth drying up, from the sheer lack of provisions. Neither did they have any relationship to the attitudes of ranking politicians in the rulering cabal (when they conduct themselves with dignity and decorum, then cabal could be replaced with cohort or company). Rather, “high” and “very high” and “hard” all have intimate associations with the chronic grappling by Guyanese with a monstrous and hardship inducing cost-of-living environment. Ow, have a heart Dr. President, Dr. Vice President, Dr. Finance! These are people too, and not to be mistaken for wooden bridges and steeled towers bristling across the landscape.
Yes, I know that this is sure to stir much bristling in the hearts of PPP pundits, PPP fundamentalists, and PPP loyalists. Horses for courses, I conclude. But amid the grandeur and splendor of skyscrapers skyrocketing to the heights, there are the Guyanese languishing at the lower elevations. They have to deal with this thorny, pesky, tricky, rocky, issue called cost-of-living. The problem is that as Guyanese are forced to deal with cost-of-living agonies, they have been dealt a losing hand by their own government, their own callous leaders. Now, I would never employ such discordant words in relation to the illustrious ilk of His Excellency Ali, nor the wunderkind, Dr. Jagdeo, nor the polymath, Dr. Singh. These fine gents have been too good to the Guyanese people. Just don’t tell that to some people.
Because the people living in Les-beholden, Mibicuri, Johanna and Yakusari in Black Bush Polder, Corentyne are dying on their knees and ankles from the “high” and very high” and “hard” cost-of-living traumas that brutalize them (“How the cost-of-living is affecting people” – Part 37, SN August 21). Ms. Shiwmangal and Ms. Osman should get a national award for these volumes about the pain of the people in an oil producing powerhouse. Yes, I know that that is a fixed setup, and the PPP has its own people, but the people in the Corentyne deserve better, and all those other communities in the encyclopedic volumes (they are that I assert) compiled before by SN, and sure to follow next week and the weeks after. The point and the poignancies are that the Guyanese people are punishing, and I am busy searching for the president (maybe off to Africa or Asia pressing the flesh and drumming up business) and the former president (not DAG nor DR), but always coming up empty. Where are they? What happened to their calculators and spreadsheets?
They should know that cost-of-living is battering poorer, lower, weaker Guyanese. The irony is that Guyanese resident in the heart of the breadbasket are groping and hoping for some relief, and they are reeling and gasping from the heavy, peppering jabs and the flooring hooks of cost-of-living conditions in Guyana. Editor, if this is the situation where the fruits from the ground flourish, then what about other Guyanese where the soil is made of cement and sand? And so narrow and tight also, that one has to walk sideways to pass? Twist it or be tormented by it, but cost-of-living is crippling Guyanese first, then condemning them to a less than middling existence in the richest country with the biggest GDP and the high-income that makes millionaires of every Guyanese head.
If I were a political leader-president or vice president-I would be expending considerable energies in attacking the cost-of-living torture chamber that is the lot of Guyanese, instead of attacking the people who point to these troubling things. Guyanese are hurting and they need help. Guyanese are crying out aloud, and they could do with some kind consideration. Any kind: political, financial, material, and all aimed at enhancing the nutritional state of citizens. In food. In the true fullness of living in an oil paradise. Not in presidential farces, and Vice-Presidential funny stories. That is, when he is not prowling about frightening Guyanese. Will somebody please help citizens manage?
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
