An open letter to President Bharrat Jagdeo

Jun 02, 2009 Letters

---

Dear SIR,
Before you jump on the high horse and launch an attack on Prime Minister Thompson for the mistreatment of Guyanese in Barbados, put your own house in order.

First: dredge our seven main rivers so that top level drainage can be achieved. The seven rivers are the Pomeroon, Essequibo, Demerara, Mahaica, Mahaicony, Abary and Berbice. Mr. P.Q. DeFreitas informs me that Demba dredged the Demerara River at Mackenzie for bauxite ships by hiring Boscalis, who dredged the canal by throwing up the silt on to the land. They did not shift the silt from one part of the river bed to another. They lifted the silt on to the land.
You need to do the same. It will deepen the canals and make some contribution to raising low land. This will not solve our below-the-sea level problem but it will help.

Second: re-hire our competent hydraulic engineers to restore the drainage system to the levels of efficiency that previously prevailed. When sluices emptying into the Demerara River were in full cry, the flow of water roared like a water fall. Now the water moves with the speed of molasses.

Third: Stop the cronyism in the maintenance of the conservancies. We need competent contractors to rebuild the conservancy dams, not Party subscribers who undermine the stability of the conservancy by digging from the bottom of the dams to crown the top of the dams. I have seen drainage and irrigation construction works in the Queenstown, Essequibo area that are horror stories of incompetence and poor professionalism.
Incompetence and unprofessionalism, in our management, are the causes of the flight to Barbados. Mr. Thompson cannot be blamed for your incompetence.

Fourth: reform the local government system so that progressive property taxes can be applied to the extra ordinary narcotics wealth that is in evidence in every part of the country. Those tax revenues will enable local governments to hire hydraulic engineers to institute systems of drainage that will be subsidiary to the main national systems. You have, geographically, a big country to manage, Mr. President. You cannot centralise every geographical area of its management. You have to abandon your control-freak mentality.
Georgetown comes to mind in this regard. If a proper drainage system is instituted in Georgetown, the stagnant water will move, people will be able to bury their loved ones once again at the Le Repentir Cemetery. Unemployed Africans in Charlestown, Albouystown and Ruimveldt will be able to combine their energies with efficient composting to produce organically grown vegetables that they can sell overseas even in these depressed times.

There was a time, before you were born, Mr. President, when City employees used brooms to sweep dry debris from concrete drains in Georgetown. That efficiency in management still applies in CARICOM countries like St. Kitts. The deterioration of that excellent drainage system is not the result only of your incompetence. That deterioration began in the regime of the PNC. That, however, does not absolve you of the responsibility to restore the drainage standards that prevailed in the colonial days. Mosquitoes will disappear and the health of the citizens will drastically improve.

Fifth: draw down the resources once made available by the Inter-American Development Bank to build the road parallel to the East Bank Road from Mandela Avenue to Timehri. That road was proposed by Mr. Burnham and surfaced in the Guyana 21 proposals of Stanley Ming, Eric Phillips and Kadz Khan. That will be the first main road in Guyana that will have the possibility of a development hinterland (note the word “hinterland”) on both sides of the road.
All of our roads, every one of them, built by the sweat and blood of the enslaved, are mere duplicates of river transport or sea transport. Development is only possible on one side of the road.

Development along all, let me emphasise, all of our roads is halved because of alignments that are so close to the sea or to the river. Potential for hinterland development on both sides of the road exist on the Wismar-Rockstone Road, the Bartica- Potaro Road, the Lethem Highway, the Upper Demerara Road and the Supenaam-Mazaruni-Cuyuni trail. But that potential will take decades to be developed.
Development along the road parallel to the East Bank road will permit immediate relief to the congestion in Georgetown. Why should people have to sleep 12 in a room in South Georgetown? Why should South Georgetown have to continue to be one of the most densely populated areas in the world, when Guyana remains an empty country, and when there is empty space that can be developed next door to Georgetown along the Burnham-Stanley Ming- Eric Phillips- Kadz Khan Highway?

Development along the Burnham- Stanley Ming- Eric Phillips –Kadz Khan Highway will permit the inward development that is always spoken about as necessary for getting away from the below-the-sea level coastland. Unrealistic proposals envisage shutting down Georgetown and building an alternative capital away from the sea. The PPP proposals consider Berbice to be that alternative area.
Development, however, does not result from such unrealism. The more realistic proposal follows gradualism. If we move inwards along the Burnham-Stanley Ming- Eric Phillips –Kadz Khan Highway, we will shift inwards, gradually and realistically.

These five proposals are necessary for putting Guyana’s house in order and for developing our country. Barbados has put their house in order, for Barbadians. They did not develop Barbados for Guyanese. Barbados has already done its duty by accommodating several waves of Guyanese migrants.
Guyana has accommodated waves of Brazilians and Colombians who are contemptuous of Guyanese and who export Guyana’s wealth to their homeland. Those people have no loyalty to Guyana.
It will not be easy for you to pursue any of these five proposals. They require skill and, above all, an abandonment of your decision to ignore Africans and your refusal to consider a development policy for the development of Africans.

You will note that every one of these five proposals includes space for the development of all the races. There is nothing in these proposals that is exclusively African or Indians.
But the proposals create space for Guyanese development. That is where you need to start. Your stewardship in relation to the Guyana economy has been a failure because you have been even-handed
It is easy to attack Mr. Thompson. It is much harder to put you own house in order.
Clarence F. Ellis

---

---