Dear Editor,
So the Chairman of the Private Sector Commission (PSC), Mr. Komal Singh, in his address to a meeting with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) delegation pronounced that “every economic sector in Guyana is experiencing growth, driving an increasing demand for skilled labour.” This is true but he then proceeds to state that any unemployment in Guyana is voluntary.
Some of us secured in our ivory tower fail to see the bigger picture. Persons find it uneconomical to work in areas that are distant from their homes, which require excessive amounts for transportation and even sometimes housing. Over a year ago, I was in a local Guyanese establishment, and engaged an employee behind the counter. I found out that they had come in from Venezuela a few months earlier.
The Guyanese Manager observing the conversation waved his hand and told the Venezuelan employee not to speak with strangers. This remark must not be trivialised because it points to much deeper issues. All of a sudden, Guyanese born and bred here are now being described by the new Private Sector elite as being a stranger. This means that our Amerindian Brothers and Sisters who settled here thousands of years ago, are now strangers. The descendants of those who travelled in boats and traded with Amerindians are now strangers. See Ivan Sertima’s book – They Came before Columbus.”
The Descendants of the African who with their folly and complicity of some African Chiefs were herded into slave castles in West Africa and later tricked and placed into ships and brought to labour under inhumane conditions, being beaten, dehumanized, and cut off from their ancestral roots, to dig canals and dams to produce sugar and cotton., and according to the Book, “Overthrow of Colonial Slavery,” allowed Massa to make fabulous fortunes out of free labour of the Africans who civilised the entire Coastal belt must now be described as ‘strangers.’
Our Indian Brothers who were brought on ships, provided by the former plantation owners, worked hard and made sacrifices. Their descendants must now be described as strangers. Those who came from Madeira and China and settled here are now strangers in the Cooperative Republic of Guyana.
If the Private Sector Commission are truly concerned, they should address the growing gap between the haves and the haves not. To reduce this widening gap, the Private Sector must be bold enough to bring together all of the political parties, in and out of office, to retool the education system, energise and give relevance to the fastest growing economy of the world.
The World Bank report noted that Education in the Caribbean was in crisis. An examination of the recent CXC results, showed how Guyana has fallen behind in the key areas of Mathematics, Science and English Language. A truly concerned Private Sector must take a holistic view of Guyana if we are not to betray what Cheddi Jagan and Forbes Burnham fought for. Only a retooled educational system can provide the business industry with the skills and attitudes required to make this and succeeding generations, the beneficiaries of the Creator’s bounty, of His blessings. The Private Sector Commission can help take us forward instead of being part of the orchestrated propaganda blitz.
Incidentally, I’ve said nothing on this question so far. But when the Government puts it as ‘One Guyana,’ on an official document such as our Passport, it is time for the PNC to take credit for first advancing the idea of One Guyana in Parliament in 2006. It was then that the Leader of the PNC, Robert Corbin in 2006, advanced this idea, during an effort to harmonize the existing social and political groupings existing at that time. The slogan ‘PNC/R ONE GUYANA’ then had a specific objective and was not intended to replace our National Motto of “One People, One Nation, One Destiny.”
They say, there is no greater praise one can give to another person than when one copies an idea or a slogan from another. The PNC should therefore be proud that the PPP in government has copied a slogan from the PNC.
Only the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth can set us free.
Yours truly,
Hamilton Green
Elder
