THE TIME IS COMING SOON

Jul 02, 2010 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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The Minister of Labour, Manzoor Nadir, cannot be serious when he says that this column should call on the United States to provide the information about cases of Trafficking in Persons (TIP) in Guyana so that these can be investigated.
Look how much information has been provided by the United States through court cases! What has become of the investigations into those allegations? How far has the investigation into the allegations of phantom killings gone?
Where is the investigation into the allegations that a minister of the government facilitated the purchase of a spy computer for Shaheed ‘Roger’ Khan who is now serving a plea bargaining fifteen-year sentence?
How is it that a criminal investigation was launched into one set of information from Khan’s trial but not into another set of information for which there seems to be more traceable evidence?
How is it that the police have launched an investigation into the death of Ronald Waddell but are not launching an investigation into the allegation that a minister of the government facilitated the procurement of a spy computer for Khan and his cohorts?
The minister should be ashamed to be calling on the United States to provide the evidence of TIP in Guyana. The United States is not going to do so. Protocol and convention would not permit the United States to justify the contents of its report.
Some of the information would have been obtained from confidential and other protected sources.
The United States is not going to engage in any prove-and- defend exercise when it comes to its reports on other countries. It is for the government of Guyana to debunk the US’s report through its own investigation. Is the government willing to do this in a credible way?
The PPP has a track record of avoiding commissions of inquiry and non-partisan investigations.
If it is serious about determining the extent of the US’s exaggeration of the TIP in Guyana, it should appoint a broad-based, non-partisan investigation to look into the areas identified as problems by the US.
That country will find it difficult to dispute the findings of a broad-based panel commissioned by the government to examine the incidence of TIP in Guyana. The US is going to be hard-pressed to justify its rating of Guyana should an independent panel of experts find that its conclusions on Guyana were highly exaggerated.
Is Mr. Nadir able to convince his superiors in the government to take such a course given that Guyana faces the threat of sanctions should its TIP status not improve by next year? Is Mr. Nadir willing to recommend this course of action to his superiors?
Instead of calling on the United States to reveal the cases of TIP in Guyana, and especially the 984 reported child workers who were taken out of the labour force, the Minister should ask his government how it is that a child labour removal project could have been authorized in Guyana, and the government which is supposed to exercise sovereign responsibility over the affairs of the nation, did not have the level of control over the project to allow it to verify the accuracy of reported cases of child labour.
Surely by now the government ought to know that there will be cases in which some dishonest non-governmental organizations will inflate numbers so as to justify the foreign funding.
In other parts of the world there have been incidences where numbers were inflated to show that persons were treated, when in fact these numbers were simply manufactured.
If the government of Guyana is going to approve a foreign-funded project, the government has to be in a position whereby it can ensure that the information from the project will be subject to scrutiny to avoid any inflation of numbers.
So instead of casting aspersions about the number of child workers taken out of forced work, the Minister should ask those who were responsible for the design of the project to explain what steps were taken at the oversight level to verify the accuracy of the numbers.
Was it a design fault that would have allowed the government not to have a role in verifying the total number of child workers taken out of conditions of servitude?
These are the things that should be preoccupying the minister. The minister also does not have to worry about Peeping Tom’s landed status in the United States. That cannot be revoked. What he should be worried about is what action will be taken against some “big ones” in Guyana, because while persons can delay the day of judgment by the United States, they cannot escape it, and it is only a matter of time before the United States tightens its noose against certain big ones. When this time comes – and it is coming soon – visas are not going to be revoked, citizenship is going to be recalled.

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