Becoming… the new Dubai

We’ve spent the last few years aggressively auditioning to become the Dubai of the Caribbean. The evidence is everywhere, innit?? Branded hotels sprouting from swampy lots, luxury SUVs breeding at alarming rates, endless construction with the requisite loads of sand klocking our roadways!! But every true new Dubai needs one more ingredient before graduation: exploited migrant labour!! And now – thanks to the recent disclosure involving 38 Indian workers allegedly abused by an Indian company in Guyana, including the death of one worker — we may finally have completed the oil-boom starter pack!! Hurray!! The vision is becoming reality.
But of course, Guyana’s version comes with historical irony so thick you can spread it on bake and saltfish!! Our Mudland was literally built on indentureship after slavery ended and the Brits imported Indian indentureds under brutal working conditions, debt, confinement, and exploitation dressed up in legal paperwork!! Generations later we silence their history by commemorating “Arrival Day” – NOT Indian Arrival Day!!
Now, in a stunning act of historical method acting, we appear to be recreating the indentureship system in high definition!! The only thing missing are the sailing ships crossing the kala pani!! Everything else is apparently back in fashion: Impoverished Indians recruited with promises? Check. Dependency on employer for housing and survival? Check. Abysmal living conditions and abuse? Check. A dead labourer quietly folded into the machinery of “development”? Tragically, check.
Now before anyone gets their bucktas in a knot, this ain’t no attack on development itself. Countries need infrastructure – roads, hotels, ports, hospitals, and housing. But there’s something sick about a nation born from the trauma of indentured labour sleepwalking into a system where vulnerable imported workers once again become disposable inputs in an economic boom!!
We gotta move beyond the expected Opposition’s response to score points to any Dubai-like response: “We’re investigating…This is an isolated incident…Guyana remains committed to labour standards” etc!! Then everyone returns to arguing about who got the latest billion-dollar contract. Truth is, rapid wealth changes countries faster than institutions can adapt. Dubai learned this. Qatar learned this. Every petro-state gotta learn the lesson eventually: when you’re racing to build faster than your domestic labour force can sustain, migrant workers become the scaffolding holding up the dream. And when profits, deadlines, and prestige projects collide with weak oversight, exploitation becomes not an accident, but a feature. We’re now discovering this in real time. For years we mocked Gulf states for constructing futuristic skylines on the backs of desperate South Asian workers. Yet here we are, importing labour under questionable conditions while congratulating ourselves on becoming a global investment destination.
Turns out creating a “Dubai” ain’t just about skyscrapers and oil money. It also meant reviving indentureship with air-conditioning!!

…responsive?
The Regional System was introduced by Burnham in his 1980 Constitution supposedly to devolve powers downwards!! But in practice it was like telling a hyena to share its carcasses with foxes!! It was all a pappy show to tick-off boxes in his claim of advancing democracy!! And of course, create a new layer of bureaucracy to provide “jobs for the boys”!!
Well, while the PPP is committed to encouraging democracy at the grassroots, the inherited entrenched lethargy and distortions have proven quite a challenge for them to change. But with local government elections coming up, in addition to throwing the energetic Priya into the Local Government Ministry job, they’ve just done a complete “cancel and replace” operation with the ten Regional Executive Officers!!
Now, rather than taking it as a signal that the government might be looking at root and branch reform in the local government system, the Opposition’s focusing on taking potshots at the rationales for change!!
Just shows that oppositions just gotta oppose for opposition sake!!

…a puppet
Continuing her courting the favours of US Pres Trump, Devious Delcy just had Mad Maduro’s bagman Saab deported to the US!! She wants him to annul the upcoming ICJ unfavorable verdict to Venezuela on the Border Dispute!!