Dear Editor,
On the eve of May 25th, 1966, the lowering of the Union Jack, a symbol of the colonial past, welcomed the hoist of the Golden Arrowhead, the emblem of a new nation. History records the two fathers of the nation, Hons. Dr. Cheddi Berret Jagan and Linden Forbes Sampson Burnham shared an embrace at the Golden Arrow hoist to the tune of Dear Land of Guyana, putting aside bitter and at times tumultuous political differences to welcome the birth of our beloved a cooperative nation.
Cooperativism goes back to the 1830s when ex-slaves pooled their resources via wheelbarrows and bought plantations of Victoria and Buxton along the East Coast Demerara. On February 23rd, 1970, in remembrance of the 1763 Berbice Slavery rebellion, that if succeeded would have birthed our nation over one hundred years earlier, Guyana, became the only Cooperative Republic. Succeeding this historic moment, hundreds of cooperative societies were born in the 1970s under the ethos “that spirit of community, the pooling of capital, labour and skills, joint ownership of the enterprise and sharing in the profits.” (Ten-Pow, 2019).
Cooperatives had support institutions developed for its sustainability. The Guyana National Cooperative Bank (GNCB) provided capital for cooperatives while the Kuru Kuru Cooperative College provided business capacity training. (Ten-Pow, 2019). Cooperatives were not immune to the economic decline in the 1980s with 1,440 cooperate societies in 1989 reduced to 1,268 in 2016. GNCB ran into operational difficulties and was sold in 2002. Our redeeming quality is the Cooperative College that has continued along with funding initiatives from the Caribbean Development Bank (Ten-Pow, 2019).
Today, in Guyana, they are hardly signs of cooperation in the Cooperative Republic with no support from the current administration for cooperatives. It has become a way of life for Guyanese citizens to forget the spirit of cooperation, which has been replaced with greed, corruption, and deception. As an observer of this radical transition in our society, primarily in the early 2000s the ties that bound us as a people has now been replace with the forces of profiteering on the backs of poor people and providing little to no relief for the disenfranchised of society. It is heartbreaking to observe the erosion of morality in our society.
If the current administration is serious about the future of the country, Cooperative societies should be developed further with funding and technical assistance. Students from the College can use the opportunity to visit the cooperative societies to learn about its challenges and opportunities to partner to provide technical assistance. It is time to reinstate a funding mechanism like GNCB with the assistance of Development agencies.
Guyanese collectively need to see each other as our brother’s keepers. We must be kind, caring and work together regardless of race, religion, or geographic challenges to forge the path of self-reliance and sustenance for the future dependence on each of us, man, women, and youth to ensure that this Cooperative Republic succeeds. In the words of W.R.A Pilgrim:
“Let us co-operate for Guyana,
Let us co-operate for our land,
Let us resolve to fight together,
See we do it right together,
Can we do it? Yes we can.”
Sincerely,
Collin Haynes MPH MBA