How to Allocate the Oil Wealth: A Proposal

Aug 27, 2018 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Cash payments from oil proceeds have generated public interest at every level in the society. Several questions have been raised. Among these questions are: Cash payments- -What amount should be paid and who should be the recipients? What should be the timing and duration of these cash payments?
How much funds should be disbursed for public and private goods? These are only a few of the questions raised by many interested Guyanese both at home and in the diaspora.
What appears to be lacking in the debate, however, is a ranking of the many choices being discussed within the context of the ten administrative regions and conditioned by a matrix of project preferences that could be transformative across different groups in the society.
The development targets, which are not exhaustive, consider categories covering infrastructure, a social safety-net, human development, export and production incentives, research and other target considerations. Using population data and area measurements of Guyana, we can calculate per capita measurements by region and activities, once the project matrix is completed with the choices by Guyanese.
Under infrastructure, policy makers can consider projects such as electricity, using solar power, wind, hydro-electricity, natural gas, and oil. Other projects to be considered are street lights, roads, well-water for home consumption, bridges, kokers, drainage and irrigation to avoid flooding, sea defence, airports, a deep-water harbour, schools, hospitals, markets, police and fire stations, green projects, and internet services, among other choices.
In the Social Safety-Net category, allocations can be made for pensions, NIS Benefits and health care, services for the poor and elderly, and cash transfers/payments.
Human Development should consider education (free primary and secondary schools; trade schools, free books, computers, free transportation (boats, buses), free lunch for school children, well-paid teachers, school nurses).
These school services will remove the financial constraint of households with school-aged children and equalize education access with the tools and facilities for learning.
In addition to traditional education subjects, the curriculum must include sports, arts, culture, at least one foreign language (Spanish, Dutch, Portuguese, French, Chinese); classes on cooperatives and social cohesion; and unless medically prohibited, every school child must learn to swim, for this is the land of many waters (Guyana has over 40 plus rivers, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rivers_of_Guyana); and children must visit at least three regions where they do not live.
This is important because most Guyanese who live on the Atlantic coast of Guyana (Regions 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6) do not know or never visited Regions 1, 7 8 and 9, where we have our largest bio-diversity of birds, plants, fish and animals as well as tons of fresh water and numerous water-falls.
These regions also contain our largest supply of minerals. Visits by children to these regions can influence what they may wish to study and take up as professions.
University training for a four-year degree may or may not require student loans. However, if loans are required, these should be available. Using acceptable, annual performance reviews, pay-back will be in employment in the public service for 5 years.
If the scholarship employee leaves before the contract terms are satisfied, s/he will pay one and half times the unpaid balance. If s/he serves out their five-year contract, s/he will get a cash gift of 50 percent of the loan s/he repaid. If s/he did not graduate, conditions of employment or payment will be worked out.
If s/he has to leave the country before graduation or leave the country before the contract is completed, marketable security to the value of the outstanding contract amount must be lodged.
For persons leaving the country on official duty/training within the contract period, the employer will cover the outstanding liability.
Under the category for export and production incentives, consideration should be given to agriculture, mining (gold, diamonds, bauxite, glass making, other minerals), tourism, forestry, fisheries, small business loans, and house construction using bauxite overburden/clays.
This will stimulate employment, strengthen foreign exchange markets and bring down the cost of home construction and ownership. It should be noted that houses made of bauxite overburden/ clay bricks are more environmentally friendly than wood or concrete and these natural environmental elements should be key components in the Green Guyana Programme.
Houses constructed with these elements will require less maintenance relative to wooden houses; and they will still be habitable long after the mortgage is repaid, yielding an asset for at least the next two generations. For example, the Court of Policy on Fort Island, and several churches in Essequibo built with clay bricks in the eighteenth century and just after, are proof of longevity. No wooden building in Guyana has this type of durability.
Finally, research funds can be allocated for work on bio-diversity, anthropology (Walter Roth Museum, Dennis Williams), mining, among other worthwhile investigative projects from academic and research institutions.
While cash payments are not excluded in this targeted development approach, it is posited that cash grants must be ranked alongside all other development projects and safety-net needs in each region.
It would also be premature to speak of cash payments without knowing the eligibility criteria for accessing the funds; as well as not knowing what administrative and accountability structures would be needed to manage the funds.
Sincerely,
Optimistic Citizen

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