….urges Guyanese to reject ethnicization policy
By Svetlana Marshall
Leader of the Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC), Khemraj Ramjattan said Irfaan Ali’s Jagdeo-led Administration is exhibiting dangerously discriminatory patterns, loaded with “ethnicisation,” as he pointed to the fact that since the change in Administration on August 2, 2020, hundreds of Guyanese have been dismissed, others flooded with nowhere left to go, and projects and policies, developed under the APNU+AFC Administration, dismantled.
Environmental and Petroleum Engineer, Dr. Vincent Adams; Environmental Economist, Dr. Mark Bynoe; Commissioner Trevor Benn, who has a wealth of experience having served the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) for over 11 years, and the Public Service for 25 years; Sherie Samantha Fedee, a career public servant with over 25 years of unbroken service; Colvin Heath-London, a Business Consultant with vast managerial experience having worked on multi-billion dollar projects in the Caribbean, China and the Middle East; Attorney-at-Law, Amanza Walton-Desir; Economist, Dr. Clive Thomas; Major (Ret’d) Aubrey Heath-Retemyer and 38 employees at the now defunct State Asset Recovery Agency (SARA) are just a small percentage those dismissed at the hands of the PPP/C Administration.
“The AFC sees the recent spate of terminations of public servants, substantially of one ethnicity, Afro Guyanese, in these savage COVID times as provokingly troubling,” Ramjattan said.
At the time he was speaking during a virtual press conference hosted by the AFC on Friday.
The AFC Leader said the reckless dismissal of professional Guyanese is not only an act of executive lawlessness but makes a mockery of constitutional service commissions – Public, Police, Teacher and Judicial- set up to prevent the politicisation of appointments and dismissals.
“A cycle of hatred can be created from this uncalled for development which can segregate our Community further. The rule of law must govern such a policy which affects the employ of so many and on whom thousands depend on,” Ramjattan said.
He added: “Outside of this category of terminations, there is the instance of the Head of the Environmental Protection Agency [Dr. Vincent Adams] being released from employ whilst his technical and professional qualities were needed in negotiating the Payara Production Agreement.”
The APNU+AFC, through the Office of the Leader of the Opposition, has been actively collecting data from persons who have been dismissed.
Ramjattan said instances of this badge of ethnicisation have also occurred in the area of squatting.
“The AFC has noticed the regularisation of squatters at Conservancy Dam Canal No 1 with provisioning of lights and water and the several at West Demerara from Ruimzight to Mary, Zeelugt, and Parika where East Indians are predominant. Yet at Success, East Coast Demerara where Afro Guyanese brothers and sisters were conducting same, they are being shot at by the Police and flooded out,” he said.
Ramjattan said Guyanese must condemn the destructive polarising development, noting that the PPP/C’s action is provoking an explosion in an already tense national situation.
Further, Ramjattan pointed to, what he describes as the unwise, unjustified dismantling of policies and programmes developed under the APNU+AFC Administration for the benefit of all Guyanese.
“The significant move to reopen the closed sugar factories in the face of cogent and compelling evidence that this will result in a massive misspending of the country’s monies just to create jobs for its East Indian base of support is stupendously ill-advised economics,” he reasoned.
Ramjattan reminded that the production cost of sugar is significantly higher than the selling price, and as such it was critical to downsize the industry. He said the PPP/C only has itself to blame for the crisis faced by the local industry.
“Millions of US dollars were borrowed from the EU, the Chinese, the IDB and the CDB for the sector, a huge chunk for the then new Skeldon Factory. Over $1B Guy was given per month for 36 months by the APNU+AFC Government in its first 36 months to attempt to save it,” Ramjattan pointed out.
He said: “It was not viable. And that is why it was right-sized. To continue to take money out of the Treasury, in the first case $5B from September to December 2020; and, as we are now told by Agriculture Ministry officials, another $25 B and more for Ashni Singh’s come back Budget just to continue in 2021, is but shoveling hard earned resources down a black hole. The new GuySuCo’s CEO blunderings and babble must never be given any credence nor credit. Propaganda will not make Sugar profitable.”
He submitted that the monies being pumped into GuySuCo could be better spent assisting former sugar employees in developing medium scale greenhouse farms and market access.
