…on GuySuCo’s lands
The news sounded too good to be true; and with good reason, it was too good to be true. Your Eyewitness is talking about the now retracted news item that Granger had declared GuySuCo’s lands weren’t going to be put on sale. He’d said this at his once-a-year press conference, and the retraction suggests why Granger’s been so skittish about facing live questions. He explicitly declared, “The idea is that we will not sell off the family jewels…we will make sure that the lands which are being taken out of sugar are placed to the benefit of the people of Guyana as a whole.”
Now, as a historian, Granger certainly knows all about the blood, sweat and tears – not to mention lives – that were shed to create those “GuySuCo lands” that are our “family jewels”. Hundreds of miles of canals had to be dug by slaves — and later by indentured labourers — to drain the land after they would have cleared the tough mangrove and other mosquito-infested vegetation. And they got absolutely nothing for their labours. If Granger has forgotten about this, maybe he can brush up on Walter Rodney’s “History of the Guyanese Working People”!!
The point of bringing up this history is to tie it to what Granger has supported at a national and regional level – reparations for the uncompensated labour of the exploited workers, to be paid to their descendants. Your Eyewitness isn’t going to get into the merits or demerits of shutting down those four estates at this time; but if lands are now going to be “redundant”, why can’t they be given to fired sugar workers on a “sweat equity” basis? The workers wouldn’t be given any “handouts”; which he claims he detests, since it leads to a dependency syndrome.
Meaning that workers would get lands in, say, 15-acre plots, and would gradually pay for them from the crops they would cultivate. In this manner, the Government would still be collecting revenues but the lands would remain in the hands of Guyanese. This is an issue on which all Guyanese must take an uncompromising stand, since to sell these lands to people outside of the industry — much less the foreigners who’ll most likely want to snap them up to get a toehold for the coming oil boom — is to betray our ancestors.
The betrayal is worse by Moses Nagamootoo, who’d explicitly promised sugar workers that, if any estate were to be closed, they’d get first dibs on the land.
But for quite a while now, it seems, a cat has got his tongue. Or is he muzzled by the hand that feeds him??
$22million and an SUV??
…on oil local content??
Our private sector has smelled a rat with the “Oil cooperation MOU” the Granger Government’s about to sign with T&T PM Keith Rowley. They’re concerned the Government’s a little too blasé about the intention of business entities – which is to make as much money as they can. Now, your Eyewitness KNOWS local businesses are no different, as you would’ve mumbled, dear reader! But the difference is that, with them, at least the money remains here, to be either spent or reinvested in the economy.
If the Trinis are to rake in the profits – like ANSA did with that $632million murky pharma contract – it’ll be funnelled out to the land of carnival and soca!! It’s for the same reason that our private sector is insisting foreigners shouldn’t just be filing company names at our registry and calling them “local”.
Now, as will be argued, the Trinis – or whoever – may have skills that we don’t, in this inchoate oil sector. Fair enough.
Just insist they hire and train 60% Guyanese within five years!
…teachers
It’s very heartening that the strike by teachers for a living wage is getting ever-increasing support. This is as it should be.
Guyana cannot afford to have the PNC take us back to the high-handedness of Burnham’s rule, when unions had to be lap dogs!
