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Is foreign aid actually used for the purposes intended?
DEAR EDITOR,
The Kaieteur News article, dated October 20, 2008 and captioned “Guyana to get more aid to fight drug trafficking” must be a piece of news that “perks” every Guyanese interest.
According to the article, in a recent exclusive interview with Kaieteur News, the U.S Ambassador to Guyana, Mr. John Melvin Jones, stated that Guyana is to benefit from increased assistance from the U.S government to help in the fight against drugs.
Mr. Jones’ predecessor would have stated that such assistance depends on success scored by local drug enforcement agencies.
It’s clear that there were concerns that caused the Ambassador, then, to hint at some kind of conditionality to be attached to such assistance.
So the obvious question now is whether the U.S, as a matter of policy, has attached conditional ties to such assistance? And if those conditions indeed existed, are they now being removed, and why?
While Guyanese would welcome any assistance the country can get to combat the growing drug trade, we are concerned as to whether these foreign aid are actually used for the purpose intended.
Further, there are usually no actual benefits or success the people can identify as stemming from the impact of the assistance.
Instead we see more ‘junkies’ on the streets, more contract-type killing, more drug mules being nabbed in the U.S after they passed Timehri Airport, more gang warfare, and the kinds of drug related ills.
Guyanese have time and again called for international financial lending agencies and friendly nations to attach some kind of conditions to loans or assistance coming to Guyana.
The conventional position that Parliament and the people should serve as oversight bodies to ensure that foreign aid and loans serve their intended purposes is not sufficient.
This situation becomes more complicated in an environment where transparency remains a concept waiting to be explored; and when all the government needs to do is to legitimize their policy with a simple majority vote in Parliament.
This headline comes at a time when Guyana has just been declared as the most corrupt English speaking country in this hemisphere, according to a recent survey by Transparency International.
At the U.S Embassy-sponsored Guyana Civil Military Relations Conference held in Guyana on August 11-14, 2008, and of which the Guyana Government refused to participate, a number of participants expressed the concern about aid coming to Guyana without conditions.
At a meeting in Trinidad in June, 2004 International Diners, and International Funding Institutions met with Caribbean governments and stakeholders to report on funds dispersed in member countries to help in the fight against HIV/AIDS.
At this meeting it was reported that while Guyana was a major recipient of these funds, there was ample evidence that the funds were not being fully utilised for the purpose in which was intended.
The government’s representative, who is still a Minister of the government, can attest to this fact, since he was a participant, like me, at this function. Like I am doing now, I raised the concern about oversight and monitoring of these funds.
There was a grudging acknowledgement that indeed some mechanism by these donor/funding agencies should be implemented to monitor how these funds are spent. I am not sure if there was any movement towards this end.
But today we hear that more funds will be coming to Guyana to help in the war against drugs, even as citizens remain in a state of ignorance with regard to how previous funds were utilised to assist in purging the society of the illicit drugs and the success, if any, resulted from the employment of these funds.
Guyanese would like to hear more from Ambassador Jones on how his government intends to work with the people of Guyana, and major stakeholders to ensure that maximum benefit is derived from the employment of these funds.
We are aware that as a sovereign nation our domestic laws are paramount to any international rules and regulations.
However, in a state where ideals of democracy, transparency, and good governance seem far removed, thus paving way for allegations of rampant corruption and mismanagement, the people become the ultimate victims.
Lurlene Nestor
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