Discerning and overcoming barriers to development

Dear Editor,
Reading Tuesday’s edition of the Guyana Times, I want to commend Tourism, Industry and Commerce Minister, Oneidge Walrond and our Government’s sense of and programmes for development manifested in the article, “Everyone has equal opportunity to bid for contracts” – Walrond.
The first step in development is to enact and enforce open transparent systems. A second no less essential step is to work similarly high levels of success of all groups so as to give substance to our aspiration of “One Guyana”. For a society to stay together, the necessary standards should not be seen and approached as hurdles to fail and exclude many but as standards to which many if not all are to be trained (by various methods and paths) to attain.
I commend also reports on training to achieve required standards in smaller infrastructural works and the acceptance of alternative concrete roads which in terms of capital needs, experience, and expertise pose lesser hurdles (than asphalt surfaces) to small contractors and put persons in the street to work. Development must get on to a path of putting our people to work in their own development, doing, working, and learning the work and about working, getting better each day, and in that process developing ourselves and arriving in time at a developed state.
We could be on the road to that development. The faces in the picture of a section of the potential contractors were full of attention, and in which I thought I discerned at the same time some anxiety about doing well and being successful. And though a small number of faces, eleven, it was a good representation of who we who are Guyanese are, in race and gender.
Without a doubt my sensitivity to this issue of “development ” this morning has been heightened by my attendance yesterday afternoon at the “Presentation of the World Bank’s Review for Latin America and the Caribbean” by Mr Bill Maloney, Chief Economist for the Region. It was challenging and inspiring. On many measures as a whole, we are not doing well, with a projected growth rate of 1.4% compared with 2.1% for the whole world. Yes, there are always variations around the average – two brighter spots were the Dominican Republic doing especially well in diversifying their economy, and good prospects for Guyana in developing their young, rapidly growing oil sector.
The Chief Economist posed some tantalising questions “on the run”. “About 100 years ago Chile was number 1 in production of copper in the world, and Mexico was number one in silver – and who was number 2? – Japan. How was it that Japan developed a diversified economy from its number two position and Chile and Mexico did not from their number one position? I said tantalising questions because I think he knew the answer that I would venture. A lot depends on how we see each other and if we see worth, purpose, and a valued end in working for the good of each other, and being comfortable approaching and discussing with each other. And so as Chief Economist hinted, in Japan, the work and income in copper and silver could in a number of ways required, be the base of and lead to ever-widening economic activities.
Japan was already or nearly already one Japan, whilst many of our countries in the LAC are still to become One Country. In Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Pedro Castillo in Peru, and even Lula in Brazil we see made evident the still-to-be synthesised socio-political struggle across race, class, and urban/rural gaps remaining from the colonising era set loose by Columbus. As is evident here, often, when answers cannot be found to issues in the sector being studied, one may have to look into other sectors to discern and open any barriers. Evidently, the nature and quantity of development in our LAC Region are still largely socio-politically constrained.
For us in Guyana and still, so for us of the PPP/C, Cheddi Jagan and his period of study in the USA has been a great boon to us and our country. The America he lived in from 1936 to 43 was still then revolutionary in a number of ways, still suspicious of Old Europe holding on to its Empires, and still, the place where the small men had the best chance to become big men, and the view of each other as toiling workers was still widespread. No doubt Cheddi’s American experience inspired him and fortified him to establish UG through the taunts of Jagan’s night school. Cheddi wanted to bring an American Liberal Arts tertiary education within the reach of every one of us in Guyana.
The Chief Economist threw some other difficult questions before us of the Caribbean. You have been working at integration/federation for decades now without success, should you still retain the idea (if not rethink it fundamentally)? And referring to migration and subsequent remittances, he questioned one Ambassador – ” Imagine you were a young person thinking you could make a name in nuclear engineering, would you not move to North America?
Our economic development requires our socio-political development to become One Guyana, One Guyanese People against the background in which Cheddi found sustenance – One World, One Human Race in all our diversities of physiological appearances, languages, religions, cultures, and histories.

Sincerely,
Samuel A A Hinds
Former Prime
Minister
Former President
Ambassador to the
USA