Guyana is deliberately being led down a path of poverty just to enrich a few

Mar 02, 2013 Letters

Dear Editor,
I was pleased to see that a very large delegation of Brazilians were entertained by a similarly large delegation from Guyana to discuss the building of a deep water harbour, a hydroelectric dam, and the road from Brazil to the Guyana coast.
The hydropower dam will cost us nothing, since it will be built for Guyana and Brazil on our land and will be approximately 900-1500 megawatts as the Brazilians not only want hydropower to power Manaus, a city of 2.2 million people, they also want to smelt their Bauxite ore into aluminium, which means that Guyana will also benefit from this. It will mean that we will have enough cheap power to produce aluminium.
The dam they propose will have a catchment of nearly 900 square kilometres in the mountainous Mazaruni area which also has high rainfall and is therefore a very unique location on the planet, perfect for hydropower generation, and it is ours, we will never be able to develop it, but with the help of Brazil – the fourth biggest economy in the world – we can. This country badly needs a deep water harbour, everything we buy for our daily food and clothing needs or anything we export has to be transferred in Trinidad or Suriname to smaller vessels coming in and larger vessels going out since the large ocean-going Panamax vessels cannot cross the shallow silted-up 15-ft. deep Demerara bar, they need at least 30-ft. draft, as a result everything we buy from abroad costs an estimated 30% more in transportation costs and everything we export rice, sugar, bauxite also costs more, leaving less foreign exchange for the national purse.
The PPP doesn’t have time to address these important national projects, they are too busy building a Marriott hotel, a Hopeless Canal and a stadium, since it gives the Guyanese people a false sense of achievement, when in fact they are just ways to put money into corrupt pockets.
I however hold no delusions that this initiative by the Brazilians will bear fruit, and at the end of the process Guyana will be left out and the Brazilians, fed up of begging us for all of the 20 years the PPP has been in office to help them get badly needed access to the Atlantic, will take their business and development to Suriname, and Guyana would have lost once more. We have been given an ultimatum, if by June we don’t agree to this path to certain development, the Brazilians will take their business to Suriname.
I have spoken and written about this before – these are very large development projects, the Brazilians are proposing to spend their dollars in partnership with Guyana for the mutual benefit of both countries.
Not like the Chinese who are lending us money to do non-productive national projects which are riddled with every conceivable sort of corruption.
After thinking on the matter for some time, I am convinced that the PPP government does not want these developments with Brazil since they will be partnerships, and clearly the Brazilians will not just give the Guyana government the money to do these projects, but they will want to do them themselves.
We, providing the land and they providing the money and the infrastructure as equal partners. The Brazilians need this development badly, so we would have the upper hand in these negotiations.
If this were to happen, the PPP will make no money on corrupt contracts as they are doing with the money which is lent to us by China, with very little accountability. Corrupt PPP officials are the only ones benefiting from this.
So we will continue without the Brazilians as usual since the PPP boys will not be getting the kickbacks from all of the construction the Brazilians will initiate and Guyanese will be left poor and backward as usual, whilst the Brazilians take their business to Suriname enriching that country and its people.
How long will we have to tolerate this unquenchable greed which is destroying our country?
How long will the Guyanese people look on, without protest, as the PPP sells us down the drain?
How long will the Guyana voters take to realise that Guyana is deliberately being led down a path of poverty just to enrich a few who are the political employees of the nation?
Tony Vieira

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Guyana is deliberately being led down a path of poverty just to enrich a few

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