Average Amerindian citizen would not deny that their living conditions have improved under the PPP/C

Dear Editor,
Please permit me to respond to Peeping Tom’s article, “The President needs to pay more attention to fact-checking,” published on August 25, 2024.
Based on the author’s ramblings, it was evident that he/she paid little attention to the President’s presentation at the NTCC or disingenuously attempted to distort the President’s message. The simple plain fact is that the statistics presented by the President were taken from various credible sources.
In demonstrating that the Hinterland Regions were systematically marginalized during the 28 years the PNC ruled Guyana, the President pointed out that in 1992, the residents in the rural interior were faced with absolute and critical poverty, significantly above the national average and the averages for Urban Georgetown, Urban Other, and Rural Coastal communities. This fact is well documented in various reports and academic studies that examined poverty in Guyana, including a report by the World Bank titled ‘Guyana: Strategies for Reducing Poverty Report’,’ and the International Monetary Fund Guyana: Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper Progress Report 2005, as well as studies conducted by well-respected academicians.
In a comprehensive study by John Gafar entitled “Growth, Inequality and Poverty in Selected Caribbean and Latin American Countries, with Emphasis on Guyana,” it was reported that 78.6% of the population in the rural interior were living below the poverty line, compared with an average of 43.2% for the country, 45.1% for Rural Coastal, 23.1% for Urban other and 28.8% for Urban Georgetown. In the same study, the author reported that over 70% of the rural interior was extremely poor, compared with extreme poverty of 27.7% at the national level. Regardless of the poverty measure used, there is consensus by all the reports and academic studies that the Amerindian population was affected by poverty more than the citizens from Urban Georgetown, Urban Other, and Coastal communities. The Peeper may wish to consult this study and the reports mentioned earlier to prove that the President was misleading his audience at the NTCC.
In his presentation, The President also highlighted the disparities between the hinterland regions and the rest of the country during the early 1990s, with respect to access to various social services, such as education, water, sanitation, housing, electricity, and health care. For instance, he revealed the following:
(i) The secondary enrollment ratios for the hinterland regions were significantly below the national average of 54.5% in 1991.
(ii) In terms of access to safe drinking water, the average for the hinterland regions in 1990 was well below the national average.
(iii) In terms of access to improved sanitation, the average for the hinterland regions in 1991 was 8.4% compared with the national average of 31%.
(iv) Only 25% of the hinterland communities were heavily reliant on kerosene lamps and self-generated power.
(v) The hinterland regions mainly depended on low-tier health facilities such as Health Posts and Health Centres, and only had 15 health centers in the 1990s.
Based on my review, these statistics are consistent with those in a report published by the International Monetary Fund entitled Guyana: Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper Progress Report 2005 by the International Monetary Fund and reports from the Ministry of Health Statistics Unit. The Peeper may also wish to check these reports and provide the correct statistics if the President had misquoted them. Alternatively, the Peeper is free to offer more credible statistics concerning poverty and living conditions of hinterland communities to show that our Amerindian brothers and sisters were not the most impoverished during the 1990s and are worse off today than the pre-1992 period when Guyana was the second poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. This would be more beneficial than fanciful anecdotal statements to ridicule the statistics presented by the President for the Pre-1992 period.
In his speech, the President also shared data on investment by the PPP/C government in the social sector that would have improved the living conditions of hinterland communities in the 1990s. The impact of these interventions is clearly visible. Except for a blind critic or someone who prefers to peep rather than to look at issues with open eyes, any objective citizen, especially those from hinterland communities, would readily agree that their living conditions have improved markedly under the PPP/C between 1992 and 2015. Under the PPP/C government, Amerindians were granted titles to their lands, accessed improved electricity via the Hinterland Electrification Programme, and housing via the Hinterland Housing programme.
The investments in the social sector also saw the upgrade and expansion of health and education facilities, resulting in improved educational opportunities and healthcare services for hinterland residents. Our Amerindian brothers and sisters also benefitted from improved sanitation and safe drinking water due to the investments in the water sector.
With these investments, it is doubtful that the living conditions of the hinterland citizens would have deteriorated with improved access to educational opportunities, healthcare, water, sanitation, housing, and electricity. In my humble view, therefore, the Peeper’s ludicrous claim that poverty today is higher than in 1991, without providing an iota of supporting statistics, is not only spurious but downright scandalous.
Apart from side-stepping the statistics the President presented for the periods 1992-2015, the Peeper completely ignored the unprecedented investment in the social sector by his government in hinterland villages since 2020. The details of these investments can be found in the annual budgets and estimates from 2020 to the present. The current PPP/C government has also invested in the village economies throughout the hinterland regions. Under the expanded LCDS, for instance, the government has allocated 15% of the US$150 million received from HESS to finance over 800 transformative projects in 2023. This year, the government increased the allocation to 26.5% of the US$87.5 million received in 2024 to support 242 Amerindian villages and new entrants. Again, it is highly improbable that hinterland citizens would be worse off than in the Pre-1992 period when absolute and critical poverty were at the highest in our country.
Indeed, regardless of the poverty measure used, it is impossible that poverty or the living conditions of hinterland communities would have worsened under the PPP/C. Whether we use the international poverty line, which is fixed and not necessarily contingent on a country’s national income, or a multidimensional poverty measure that captures access to social goods and services, you would easily find that the living conditions of hinterland communities improved remarkably.
The efforts by the PPP/C between 1992-2015 and 2020-present, must be contrasted with the APNU-AFC’s decision to fire 2,000 CSOs, tax the economic sectors that Amerindian communities are dependent on for their livelihood, abandon the Amerindian Land Titling Programme and call them ‘avaricious.’ These facts, much like the statistics presented by the President in his speech, cannot be erased from our history or the memory of our Amerindian brothers and sisters who suffered under the PNC from independence to 1992 and between 2015 and 2020 under the APNU-AFC government.
It is understandable that Peeping Tom, in conducting his peeping activities, is probably squinting too intensely and missing half of the developments unfolding before his squint-closed eyes. However, the average Amerindian citizen would not deny that their living conditions have improved under the PPP/C based on their own experiences, with or without any statistics to confirm this reality.

Regards,
Kevin Persaud