A STEADY DIET OF ELECTION TIME RHETORIC

Apr 19, 2015 AFC Column, Features / Columnists

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“Controllers, abusers and manipulative people don’t ask themselves if the problem is theirs.  They use it as another chance to plant the blame on someone else.”  This is a telling quote from an American writer that fits the Guyana situation perfectly.
Another writer said, ‘The most dangerous liars are those who think they’re telling the truth”.  The shoe fits the ruling party’s published excerpts of their 2015 Election Manifesto. There are few ways to describe the droll, repetitive, rhetorical utterances printed in the preamble.
“We have experience in building a country and improving people’s lives…all our people have an equal chance to live in peace, progress and prosperity…”
One can only assume that this reference was to the friends and families of the PPP’s elite.  Contrary to their boast, the PPP has in fact taken away many of the freedoms, pride, dignity and hope of the ordinary Guyanese.  One of their claims is indeed true – they have truly “changed the way our people dream” by effectively dissolving their hope of living in a secure country that accommodates their efforts to earn a decent living.
Fisherfolk in the Corentyne and the Essequibo have been consistently attacked at sea by home-grown pirates, robbed of their investments (boats, nets, engines, glue, knives, ice bins and their catches) and often killed or thrown overboard alive.  They complain that to date promises were all that they have received from the Agriculture Ministry.
The President boasted in 2011 that 80,000 house lots were distributed.  In 2015, the numbers have risen, but what concerns the Coalition is that the Ministry of Housing demands excessive payments of more than $1M for bushy plots with no infrastructure (roads, electricity, water and peripherals).  The hapless citizens in search of their dream to own their homes, have to take recourse to the private commercial banks for funds to build, then wait for years for the necessary infrastructure to be installed.  Those who haven’t the means to secure bank loans remain homeless.  The more determined citizens squat on public reserves and unregulated areas, living in makeshift tents made from plastic, cardboard and petrified wood.
EDUCATION & JOB CREATION
The PPP/C’s 2015 manifesto reeks of a cut-and-paste job.  It contains meaningless phrases with no resonance for struggling business owners who have been searching in vain for the skills they need to expand and diversify.  The larger enterprises have the most pressing need for the expertise of university graduates.
For many years they have been lodging the same complaint – that vacancies do exist within their operations for engineers, agriculturists, lawyers, chemists, social workers, communicators, doctors, dentists and ICT specialists to name a few.  They look to the University of Guyana and the technical institutes for people to fill these vacancies but end up right where they began.  They complain that every year the graduates from these institutions fail to meet required knowledge benchmarks, even after participating in skill-specific on-the-job training.
They complain that they have been asking the university’s administration to re-calibrate the archaic curricula in almost every discipline to fit the unique needs of Guyanese industries.  For years these requests from entrepreneurs in the rice industry, in building materials production, in food production, and even in machinery repairs and distribution, have fallen on the PPP’s deaf ears.  Nothing has changed at UG and now the staff and student bodies are protesting the appalling physical conditions, their inadequate emoluments and unfair conditions of service.
On the other side of the coin, the possibilities for personal and professional development of graduates at home come to a screeching halt when they are unable to find jobs to add expertise to their qualifications.  It is no wonder that the majority of tertiary level graduates leave Guyana to develop other countries.  The number of high functioning lawyers, teachers and engineers of Guyanese origin abound in the Caribbean, in North America, Europe, and as far away as Sweden, Switzerland, Africa and China.
Unless a concerted effort is made to revamp the University of Guyana, its physical facilities, its libraries and research facilities, the calibre of its lecturers and support staff, the course content in every single faculty, and unless the dark spectre of politics is removed from the Administration of this learning institution, Guyana will continue to lose the billions of dollars expended every year to provide tertiary education for our youth.  If ever there was a lose-lose situation, this one breasts the tape!
For the umpteenth time the PPP/C has promised the Guyanese people that they will develop “a number of initiatives to facilitate job creation” e.g. “regional industrial sites, incentives to employers for job creation opportunities, the development of entrepreneurship and apprenticeship programs and the establishment of business development services”. This one is as old as the sands.  Industrial sites – we heard that in 1992.
A number of Guyanese and overseas-based private companies are already providing business development/support services e.g. Qualfon, Nand Persaud Company et al.  Does the PPP plan to continue to usurp even more business space and compete with these service providers and investors?  The business community is painfully aware that they lose capacity, trained skills, customers, local and foreign markets, and revenue to plough back into their business for sustenance.  In essence, their life’s blood diminishes when they are forced to compete with government agencies in the same space.
SECURITY AND THE QUALITY OF LIFE
The right of every citizen to enhance their quality of life in a safe and secure environment is enshrined or implied in every chapter and statute of the Constitution.   Throughout two full decades of PPP rule, citizens have endured major crimes that cost Guyana too much of its valuable human resources including children, youths and women.  The party in 2015 declares “We have to wage a major fight against crime”.  Is this a case of the Rip van Winkle syndrome or just another opportunity to throw more meaningless words at Guyanese people?
The underground community of criminals has grown stronger, bolder and more innovative for one reason, i.e. there has been no sustained programme to fight crime.  Criminals operate as if with impunity and the blessing/assistance of the people who are supposed to serve and protect us.  Every day hard-working citizens are robbed of their money, their property and their lives.  It is unacceptable that grieving relatives could hold out little hope for justice.
The Minister of Home Affairs commissioned a spanking new multi-million-dollar Forensic Science Laboratory less than a year ago but today, April 2015, it is unoccupied, while ostensibly the Ministry mends the damage caused by a recent electrical fire.  The Ministry has failed to report on the state of the delicate testing apparatus which were procured for a handsome $49.79M.  There have been scattered reports of a small number of criminals being positively identified following through tests at the lab which proves that the facility is needed.
The PPP/C’s leadership has proven to be weak, mediocre, visionless and incapable of managing the nation’s finances for the country’s growth.  The party’s ineptitude has left Guyanese with few options.  We must rescue this nation and light a new path leading towards real growth.

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