Hinterland residents have much to look forward to

Jul 24, 2018 APNU Column, Features / Columnists

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If you were listening to the opposition PPP in recent weeks, you probably would have started to believe that life in our Indigenous communities is bad, gone to the dogs, crumbling since 2015. People who live in interior regions, however, know that their lives have been getting better and they now have a lot to look forward to.
Despite the PPP’s doomsday rhetoric, the reality is that the Coalition Government inherited a truckload of national problems created by the criminally poor performance of the PPP during its two decades in office. Fixing it is taking time, and while it doesn’t seem fair to ask the people of Guyana to wait for bigger benefits from proper Governance, that unfortunately is our reality. The problems created by the PPP’s mismanagement were more than anybody imagined, including the many unresolved issues in our Indigenous communities.
Party acolytes in the various Indigenous Councils held up progress, but there is now a rainbow on the horizon. A new Chairman for the National Toshaos Council (NTC) was elected last week. He is Mr. Nicholas Fredericks. From the get-go, he said in no uncertain terms that the NTC recognizes the Coalition as the duly-elected Government.
The NTC and its communities should also believe that they remain a priority on the national development agenda, and the plans and programmes that have not yet been activated will be in place sooner rather than later.
We are confident that it will become clearer to the Indigenous peoples that the PPP has provided them with only empty promises based on nothing. While this party was in government, they did precious little for indigenous peoples, except when it suited them, generally in the run-up to national elections.
While accepting this tremendous responsibility as leader of all Indigenous nations, Toshao Fredericks urged his fellow community leaders, more than 200 village captains who came to the City for the annual conference, to get ready to work with the Government, so that their plans and projects for community development would improve quickly. “We have a lot of work ahead of us. We have to realise that leadership or being a Toshao is a very broad responsibility,” he told the captains.
Some of the speakers at the opening ceremony on July 16 used the platform to lambast the Government for not ‘doing enough’ for Amerindians and for not keeping promises. President Granger strongly refuted this assertion and presented supporting facts. He cited the turning of the sod at the site of a new NTC secretariat that the NTC itself had chosen. One speaker asserted that absolutely nothing was happening on the land, and accused authorities of reneging on the promise to headquarter the Council.
It turned out to be a storm in a political teacup. The delay was created by bureaucratic hiccups rather than malfeasance. Work has begun and in a few months, the Secretariat will become a thing of beauty.
Going forward, all eyes will focus on Toshao Fredericks and his team to observe how they interface with Government since it surely makes no sense for the NTC, or the disruptive elements within, to try to play out the PPP’s agenda of destruction and non-cooperation.
The Toshaos should also be working out ways and means of “getting in” on the opportunities coming to Guyana through oil and gas. Some Guyanese entrepreneurs are preparing to start; others have already opened new businesses that are changing Guyana’s industrial landscape.
We were able to catch a strange accusation made by a ranking member of the PPP recently. Without mincing words, the member accused the Government of wasting money to charter a plane to visit remote Amerindian communities. It appears that this is something that the PPP’s ministers never bothered to do, and it says loudly that the indigenous peoples didn’t matter enough to them for a personal visit to see how they live, and to do what has to be done to improve their circumstances.
One of the first actions that President David Granger undertook after his inauguration was to institute the highly appreciated Five Bs Initiative that provides boats, buses, bicycles, breakfast and books to schoolchildren in interior and remote areas. This initiative has given children easier access to school and provides some basic school needs.
As an officer in the GDF, as an Historian traveling across the country for research, and as Leader of the political Opposition, President Granger confessed to having felt pain when he saw children going to school without shoes, without food, without books, and having to walk for many miles to get there. That was his inspiration for the 5Bs initiative.
The community infrastructure improvement project is repairing their roads and bridges; young people are being trained/prepared for meaningful (self) employment; and despite the loss of the fibre optic cable from Brazil on which the PPP government had squandered G$2Billion then gave away to a civil contractor, Government is doing everything possible to bring internet connectivity to the hinterland.
Actually, most of the materials and personnel are now in place for the National Data Management Authority and the United Nations Development Programme to begin the US$17Million ICT Access and e-Services project in Hinterland, Poor and Remote communities. The project was given the green light to begin the connectivity programme that will bridge the coastland and the hinterland; and the hinterland with the rest of the world via the internet.
Some communities are already connected to the worldwide web, like Masekenari in the Deep South Rupununi and the Pakaraima Mountain valleys. Life is easier there and everything is all new. Our indigenous peoples do have a lot to look forward to in coming weeks.

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