Milk’s been a staple of human diet for eons – even though, with folks being “lactose intolerant”, it suggests it was a late-acquired source of protein. You gotta domesticate cattle to milk them. Ever tried milking a wild cow?? Thought not!! Anyhow, here, in Guyana, it wasn’t till indentured Indians were brought here to work on the sugar plantations – after the Africans had been freed – that they replicated their “cow-minding” culture to sell fresh milk to the rest of the community.
Early on, especially in Georgetown, they earned a notorious reputation for “watering down” the milk – with trench water!! It might seem strange today, but those milk sellers soon gravitated from the plantations surrounding Georgetown – like Ruimveldt and Bel Air – into villages like Kitty and Campbellville!! Imagine those now upscale areas as milk-producing farms!! Anyhow, after the PNC slid into office in 1964, they came up with the promise “free milk and cassava”!! and decided to enter the big leagues to produce both.
Now, your Eyewitness isn’t going to get into the cassava fiasco – remember Rodney’s aphorism about everything Burnham touches turns into ****?! But with several proposals to make us milk sufficient on the table, he thought it might be useful to look into what happened to the PNC’s grandiose milk plan. Yes…Burnham was full of big plans – among other things!! Trouble was he and his Government could never execute those plans!! Dreamers, not “doers”, that’s what they were!!
At the time, most milk was produced on small farms on the coast, and transportation was organised to the Milk Pasteurization Plant in Georgetown. Your Eyewitness can still remember those big aluminium milk containers lined up on the roadsides waiting for the “milk truck”!! But the PNC decided they’d have milk production centralised – following the Russians’ dekulakization? – at a 4000-acre farm at Moblissa on the Linden Highway. All it accomplished was destroying the coastal milk production – even as Moblissa collapsed!! Part of the problem was the grass was in very sandy soils, and as the cattle grazed, they ingested sand with the grass!! Ruminate on that!!!
Anyhow, the Milk Pasteurization Plant was reducing to reconstituting imported powered milk!! In the 1980s, Government-owned GuySuCo started diversifying, and went into milk as a new product. They established dairy farms at Liliendaal and Versailles, and merged all the milk production into one massive failure, called LIDCO!! One of its directors later wangled the entire enterprise into his own “private” hands!!
So, what about the two milk projects we’re hearing about?? Well, it’s good that both are privately-funded!! In one of them, DDL’s thinking of Moblissa, but announced that the cattle won’t be grazing, but be fed in pens.
They must’ve learnt about the sand!!
…the UN aid industry
There’s the suggestion that all wasn’t kosher with the Coalition PNC Government doling out a billion-dollar rental agreement with a private citizen to consolidate all the UN Agencies servicing us in one building. Now, you know your Eyewitness’s reflexive response to such claims – we’re all by nature “bent”, so that we should check out every imputation of crookedness. And we should expect politicians to get on their high horses and feign indignation!! But whether there’s thiefin’ or not – and more likely than not there will be!! – shouldn’t we question if the benefits we’re getting from these UN types justify the big bucks we’re springing for their posh offices?
After all, we’re already paying our dues to the UN, aren’t we?? And part of that subsidises the personal rentals for the UN staff who live here. There’s a “Standard Rental Subsidy” they get, which amounts to “80% of portion of rent exceeding the individual rental subsidy threshold; Up to max. 40% of rent.”
Poverty pimps?
…frenzy
There’s a feeding frenzy in social and other media over the spectacular claims made by one detective sergeant over cover-ups and other corrupt practices going on in the Police Force.
Your Eyewitness is just surprised if anyone out there’s surprised!!
