Freddie Kissoon disagrees with Mr. Sanders’ depiction

Nov 11, 2013 Letters

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Dear Editor,
I took issue with some of Mr. Ron Sanders columns in February and May in the election year of 2011. It is unnecessary to reproduce those sections of Mr. Sanders’ thoughts that in my opinion were an evaluation of the excellent (my word) state Guyana’s economy was in under Mr. Jagdeo.
The issue was not Mr. Sanders at all, and nothing personal was said about Mr. Sanders. But I replied because I felt in an election year, I had an obligation as an academic to correct a flattering picture of Guyana’s economy which the statistics and realities in Guyana did not substantiate. I would not have replied if it was not an election year.
After all, Mr. Sanders is entitled to write and express his judgements like I do in this newspaper. And for the record, Mr. Sanders’ columns are interesting, needed in Guyana and I believe welcomed by readers.
I replied because I was of the belief that in an election year, votes could be influenced by what people write. In my case, people were responding to my columns that were critical of the PPP in an election year. And they had every right to.
We seem to be heading to an election again either nationwide local government polls or a general election before its due date of 2016. In his last Sunday column in Kaieteur News, Mr. Sanders holds the view that CARICOM countries are facing disastrous economic uncertainties. He includes the Bahamas and exempts Trinidad and Guyana. In relation to Guyana, he wrote; “With the exception of Trinidad and Tobago…and Guyana with its broad agricultural and mineral base.”
I graciously beg to disagree with Mr. Sanders and I hope he accepts my innocent response in good faith. In comparison with our CARICOM neighbours, we have always been a large country with a large agricultural and natural wealth base including bauxite, minerals, aqua-culture etc. But Guyana’s economic future has eluded it since self-government to the point where in the past thirty three years in terms of GDP and GNP, we stand only above Haiti.
Now surely, we should have surpassed our CARICOM neighbours at least ten years ago, including Trinidad that is a mere 1, 980 square miles. But when you live in Guyana then you see how those uncertain economies in CARICOM have a more certain future than Guyana. If you break it down by sectors then you will see the large size and the large sectors of wealth are a mirage.
In terms of welfare, most CARICOM states have a better delivery system than Guyana. Barbados has free health care and its Queen Elizabeth Hospital is a first rate institution compared to the Georgetown Hospital. The Georgetown Hospital offers the very basic and if you have complications, find a private hospital or die. I will just give one example. Decades ago, hospitals and private eye doctors discard the use of the tonometer to measure your eye pressure. They use a tonopen, which is less dangerous because it does not touch your eyes. Even the special ophthalmology hospital in Port Morant does not have a tonopen, which cost less than two hundred American dollars.
In little Barbados, university education is free. Contrary to what is being peddled in Guyana that at UG, tuition is $G127, 000; that is not true. Fees begin from $180, 000 rising to half a million in some degree programs at a university that most Guyanese and Caribbean people and academics worldwide know has become moribund. For all the economic crises CARICOM nations are in and for all the wealth Guyana has, UWI’s three campuses are top class institutions that can be compared worldwide.
Guyana has the highest rate of electricity throughout South and North America and the Caribbean. Guyana has the lowest levels of wages in CARICOM. Guyana’s old age pensions are the lowest in the Caribbean. Guyanese police personnel from Constable up are the lowest paid in CARICOM.
In Barbados, Jamaica and the Bahamas that Mr. Sanders identified as facing bleak futures, teachers’ income are higher than in Guyana.  Guyana has the largest migration rate in the world per capita. Black Bush Polder is the suicide capital of the world per capita. Guyana’s poverty situation is far more depressing than any other CARICOM country.
Income disparities are greater in Guyana than in the rest of CARICOM. In a column recently, I wrote that a very well placed political authority told me that sixty percent of gold extraction is illegally removed without declaration.
Mr. Sanders must know by now that the sugar industry has collapsed (I prefer that word). I close with the opinion that yes, Mr. Sanders is right, CARICOM states are in crisis but ten years from now they would have picked themselves up and start on the track again while we will still be looking for the track.
Frederick Kissoon  

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