…and land
For a country with 83,000 square miles (…well, actually 82,799 since the Venezuelans grabbed our half of Ankoko Island back in the day) and not even 800,000 people (and that’s men women and children!), you’d think land would be the last thing on earth (pardon the terrible pun!) we’d be fighting about, wouldn’t you? But there you go…land’s been in the news for all sorts of reasons.
The latest one was news about GuySuCo selling off 4000 acres of its land in Regions 3, 4, 5, and 6 to the Central Housing folks. Now, this land has been in the news for quite a while by African Guyanese activists, who pointed out that their forbears literally slaved for hundreds of years to make it cultivable with their blood, sweat and lives, and weren’t paid a penny (pretty or otherwise!) for their pains.
Later, the indentured servants from Madeira, India and China were exploited something terrible to keep the project viable. So, you’d think the Government would be a little more careful with these lands.
Not this lot! On abandoning sugar, they’d promised the present sugar workers — descendants of the slaves and indentureds — would be given plots to get into other agricultural crops. The Government was gonna identify suitable, higher-value crops and markets etc. So, hasn’t the Government lost the plot by converting all those prime agricultural lands into housing plots? Is this how they’ll honour the sacrifice of our ancestors?
And the ironic thing is a hungry world’s crying out for food because of the SCARCITY of irrigated and drained lands suitable for farming. And a heck of those hungry billions are in India and China, which now have the big bucks to pay for the food. All across the world, from Angola to the USA, ground water’s running out, and lands that were made fertile from wells are now reverting to desert. And here’s our Govt taking our intricately blood-irrigated and drained lands and turning them into concrete jungles! Go figure!
Fundamentally, there’s a profound, palpable, historically-induced disconnect between this Government and the entire agriculture sector. The fella they appointed as Minister of Agriculture epitomises all that’s wrong with their approach. While your Eyewitness is informed he has some “background” in the field, that background is totally in books, and he wouldn’t know what to do in a real “field” to save his life.
The Government’s banking on oil to save their blushes. They should look next door, at the fate of Venezuelans — with the largest oil reserves in the world, but having neglected agriculture.
Some a dem guh hallah; some a dem guh bawl. Unfortunately it’ll be the people.
…and Amerindian lands
Once again, a report comes out and announces that our Indigenous Peoples are worse off that other Guyanese groups by every measure in the book. This time the report is by UNICEF, and was presented by the Minister of Indigenous Peoples – who just happens to be Indigenous himself. Not that you would suspect that, from his absolute silence on pushing his Government to do something to change that state of affairs.
When the PPP took over in 1992, by pure serendipity, the IFIs had conducted a Guyana Living Conditions Survey which found moderate poverty at 43% and extreme poverty at 28.7%. But Indigenous peoples were practically 100% locked in absolutely poverty. They confirmed the destruction the PNC had wrought on our society.
The poverty surveys in 1999 and 2006 showed the PPP had made a dent in reducing poverty in all groups, including Indigenous Peoples. But they were still the poorest of the poor. Which has now been confirmed in 2017.
Which is why those who rail at them getting back some land are so spiteful.
…and sourcing money for land
The Opposition’s raised a very interesting question: where did the Government get the $2 Billion they paid GuySuCo for the land to Central Housing?
Secret accounts?
