…for farming
Wales Estate was closed down in December 2016. 1700 persons were thrown onto the streets…even though the Government/GuySuCo insisted that 300+ of them should go to Uitvlugt, 22 miles away, to cut cane. They’re still fighting for their severance pay that’s legally owed to them. The Govt disputes this and the matter is in court.
At the time the estate was closed, representatives of the workers and several civil society groups had suggested to the Government that it lease the land to the workers and facilitate their transition to cash crop farmers.
The Government turned a deaf ear in addition to a Nelson’s Eye to the now fired sugar workers’ plight — which has become a crisis a year later. In that year, the Government fired another 4000 workers from Enmore, Rose Hall and Skeldon. To that 5700 jobless add another approximately 2000 workers who supplied labour on private cane farmers’ holdings that supplied cane to the closed factories. The Government also refused to transition these workers into farming, even though the drained and irrigated lands were also reverting to “bush”.
But while these 7700 persons — who could’ve easily been transformed into farmers because they’re experienced working in the fields — were being made destitute, the Government, interestingly, was working overtime to facilitate farming elsewhere. In December 2016, as Wales was being closed, the Government plunked in US$3.8 million (GY$760 million) into the Caribbean Development Bank to receive a US$10.4 million (GY$2.1 billion) loan/grant to encourage farming in 4 villages. The Government said it would throw in another US$2 million or GY$400 million, bringing the pot to $2.5 billion!!
The villages chosen were Buxton and BV on the East Coast; Ithaca on the West Bank of Berbice, and Mocha, East Bank Demerara. It should surprise no one that those villages are populated by PNC supporters!! Since 2016, the Government has been working diligently to organise the 1200 farmers they claim reside in these village into co-ops to farm the “2500 acres of abandoned lands” there. That is: the Government will plunk in $1million/acre to reclaim abandoned lands, when over 25,000 drained and irrigated lands are being abandoned!! Not to mention the aforementioned 7700 fired workers!!
Now your Eyewitness isn’t unsympathetic to the needs of the PNC villages…but Jeez! – can’t the largess be spread around a bit more equitably? And it’s not that those villages have not been helped before. Take Buxton. Wasn’t it helped during the 28 years of PNC rule, 1964-1992? Then, in 2003, wasn’t it one of the “depressed” villages helped out by the Hoyte/Jagdeo 2002 dialogue? And in 2010, didn’t the PPP clear canals, clear 600 acres land, gave scholarships to the GSA, provide seeds, etc to farmers?
Shouldn’t all horses be led to water?
…on crime CoIs
During the troubles, there were a host of massacres, and not only the three frequently mentioned – Lusignan, Bartica and Lindo Creek. If we go by the definition and account in an APNU 2013 column, “…the murder of four or more victims at one location within one event,” there were the 2002 Kitty Nathoo Bar (4 persons); the Feb 2006 Agricola-Eccles massacre (8 persons); April 2006 LBI massacre (4); Aug 2006 Bagotstown/Eccles (8). But the burning issue is: what’s behind these massacres!
So why did the PNC start with Lindo Creek, the last massacre? The one-man CoI said the mother of a Lindo Creek Massacre victim wrote a letter? Well, your Eyewitness salutes the mother, but he believes that for Justice to maintain her reputation of being blind (as in being impartial) she has to perform her mission according to objective criteria — and start at the beginning.
The CoIs should begin with the background that created the mindset to the commission of the massacres – the PNC post 1997 protests!
…for City Hall
Imagine, the Mandarins of City Hall want to seize a city playground to convert into an exclusive housing compound for themselves, and the citizens of Georgetown aren’t storming the barricades.
So venality is OK when it’s our own?
