Saturday, August 13, 2022
Village Voice News
ADVERTISEMENT
  • Home
  • News
  • Sports
  • Editorial
  • Letters
  • Global
  • Columns
    • Eye On Guyana
    • For Your Attention
    • Hindsight
    • Lincoln Lewis Speaks
    • In the village
    • Mind Your Business
    • Mark’s Take
    • Future Notes
    • Children & Youth
    • Bad & Bold
    • The Voice of Labour
    • Politics 101 with Dr. David Hinds
    • Talking Dollars & Making Sense
    • Jacobs On Agriculture
    • Book Review 
    • My Turn Guyana
    • The Herbal Section
    • ECHO
  • Education & Technology
  • E-Paper
  • Contact Us
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
  • Sports
  • Editorial
  • Letters
  • Global
  • Columns
    • Eye On Guyana
    • For Your Attention
    • Hindsight
    • Lincoln Lewis Speaks
    • In the village
    • Mind Your Business
    • Mark’s Take
    • Future Notes
    • Children & Youth
    • Bad & Bold
    • The Voice of Labour
    • Politics 101 with Dr. David Hinds
    • Talking Dollars & Making Sense
    • Jacobs On Agriculture
    • Book Review 
    • My Turn Guyana
    • The Herbal Section
    • ECHO
  • Education & Technology
  • E-Paper
  • Contact Us
No Result
View All Result
Village Voice News
No Result
View All Result
Home Editorial

Create Resurgence of Village Economy

Staff Reporter by Staff Reporter
July 31, 2022
in Editorial
0
SHARES
0
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter

Support Village Voice News With a Donation of Your Choice.

Ownership and retention of ancestral lands continue to be under assault by covetous persons, government and enabled allies. This must be resisted and could only be done through occupancy and pursuing regularisation.

African Guyanese hold the unique distinction of being the only group, after hundreds of years of chattel slavery, strenuously resisting the forces of oppression, toiling long hours on the plantation without a penny, families torn apart, bodies violated, whips reigning mercilessly across their bodies, that in four of Amelioration were able to save enough to buy out plantations in the immediate post slavery period, creating the Village Movement and Village Economy.  This is a pride of place the African community should never lose sight of and always guard zealously.

READ ALSO

Housing is a human right not a commodity

Emancipation

Africans’ earlier development stands out in the post slavery society as it remains unsurpassed in scale and self-determination unto this day.  That resilience not only saw several plantations along the coast land converted to villages, but the development of an economy built on the cooperative spirit, which the name of this country pays homage to. Cooperative economics represents not only a unique sense of thrift and avenue to acquire but also trust. At the most basic is the box hand system.

The box hand sees a group of persons coming together and agreeing to throw (put) a fixed amount of money, at a fixed time for a fixed period, and each takes turns in drawing (collecting) that hand (money) until everyone receives the total of what they invested. This is a form of banking when there existed none for Africans and from which they were able to have a quantity of money to invest in some desired project/commodity.

Advertisement

It is difficult to think of the Village Movement without Cooperatives for they share a symbiotic relation and are integral to the economic development of an ethnic group. Where today Africans continue to face challenges getting loans from commercial banks there is need to re-examine the value of cooperatives. Villagers need to establish them under the Cooperative Societies Act. Reach out to the officers for technical support at the Department of Cooperative, Cornhill St. Georgetown.

In the African community there are too many painful stories of rejections from the commercial banks based on identity. This is debasing and dehumanising. There is also the issue of regularising ancestral lands which must be pursued and facilitated by all political and social forces in society. The absence of title (transport, lease, will, etc.) makes it difficult to borrow from commercial banks, a situation that is completely the reverse in other Caribbean countries such as Jamaica.

African Guyanese, singularly or collectively, must demand of Government the examination and possibility of replicating the Jamaican model because home ownership must not only rely on government selling state lands or purchasing from another. Home ownership must also be facilitated building on lands inherited based on lineage.

The plantations bought and converted to villages comprise the backlands which in some cases include areas where there are cane farming and rice cultivation. There are so many ancestral lands being left unattended, rented or underutilised, suggesting the approach to land ownership must be revisited. What is not used will be lost or coveted.  Land is empowerment. Ownership not only means ownership of a piece of Guyana but allows for valuing those inherited.

Africans must return to their villages and occupy their lands. Choose whether it be for housing, farming, business, kitchen gardening, etc. If their ancestors had within them the resolve to succeed it is not outside the reach of their descendants. The feat in creating an economy for themselves, even when the plantoclass pursued exclusion and tried undermining efforts at self-development, can be repeated. The genetic makeup that perseveres still resides within and must be manifested, as a matter of necessity,  once again.



Support Village Voice News With a Donation of Your Choice



ShareTweetSendShareSend

Related Posts

Editorial

Housing is a human right not a commodity

by Staff Writer
August 7, 2022

Homelessness is one of Guyana’s most serious and obvious problems. The enormity of the issue is evident from the moment...

Read more
Editorial

Emancipation

by Staff Writer
August 2, 2022

On August 1 Guyanese joined the peoples of most english-speaking former British colonies, and Canadians to observe the annual Emancipation...

Read more
Editorial

Tackling teenage pregnancy

by Staff Writer
June 26, 2022

Teen pregnancy, also known as adolescent pregnancy, may be one of Guyana’s biggest issues yet it gets far too little...

Read more
Next Post
APNU+AFC Member of Parliament Khemraj Ramjattan 

Ramjattan to appeal judgment in defamation case brought by Charandas- begs to differ with ruling

POPULAR NEWS

No Content Available

EDITOR'S PICK

UN Head Guterres urged bold decisions to manage climate crisis, COVID-19 and Caribbean economies

July 11, 2022
Opposition Leader Joseph Harmon (center) flanked by some of the nurses who are on protest at the Linden Hospital Complex. Also in photo are APNU+AFC Members of Parliament

Linden gearing for massive protest for nurses 

April 26, 2021

54-year-old man shot dead in Albouystown shop

February 7, 2021
This Sand Creek resident receives her COVID-19 vaccine.

COVID-19 vaccination campaign rolls out in Region Nine 

March 18, 2021

© 2021 Village Voice | Developed by Ink Creative Agency

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • News
  • Sports
  • Editorial
  • Letters
  • Global
  • Columns
    • Eye On Guyana
    • For Your Attention
    • Hindsight
    • Lincoln Lewis Speaks
    • In the village
    • Mind Your Business
    • Mark’s Take
    • Future Notes
    • Children & Youth
    • Bad & Bold
    • The Voice of Labour
    • Politics 101 with Dr. David Hinds
    • Talking Dollars & Making Sense
    • Jacobs On Agriculture
    • Book Review 
    • My Turn Guyana
    • The Herbal Section
    • ECHO
  • Education & Technology
  • E-Paper
  • Contact Us

© 2021 Village Voice | Developed by Ink Creative Agency