What is wrong with the purchase of state lands?

Jul 01, 2019 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

Do young people know the name Dr. Joshua Ramsammy? The answer is no. Guyana’s population is too young to know him. He departed from the norm, meaning that lawyers, historians, former soldiers, former journalists, business people and social scientists in general get in radical politics.
Ramsammy was a biology professor at UG. In 1972, there was an attempt on his life because of such politics. One day many, many moons ago, perhaps 30 years ago, he and I were travelling in his car to go to Berbice for WPA activities. As we passed the East Coast villages, I asked him what the government is doing with these immeasurable amounts of land north of the roadways.
Josh informed me that the millions of acres I was looking at are all in private hands. I remember exclaiming, “Jesus Christ, all that belong to private people?”
There was a wave a few days ago that has since died down about a few thousands of acres of state land purchased by a few people who either have good relations with the government or are working with the state. It turned out that what appeared on the surface of land-grabbing was a simple case of very small business people trying to make a living by owning some lands.
This land purchase story is in fact a real joke. The information of the land purchase does not amount to more than 3000 acres among the recipients. Do you know that there are hundreds of citizens in this country, who as single individuals own ten times 3000 acres of land in Guyana? You really think the state selling a man 1000 acres is of business significance in Guyana?
There are thousands of acres of prime land lying idle, the amount of which the owners don’t know about that the Israelis would grab up if we invite them in. They would pay untold billions of Guyanese dollars for these lands.
In all honesty, outside of corruption, what is the fuss about these recent land sales to Messrs Eric Phillips, Charles Ceres (whose grandfather knew my parents well; I bet Charlie doesn’t know that; I never told him), Keith Lowenfield, Marlon Bristol, an employee of the Office of the President and Charlie’s wife who heads the Department of the Environment?
The amount of those lands is virtual peanuts compared to what thousands of citizens have in this country as individual owners. Here is an extract from my Sunday, September 10, 2017 column captioned, “Who owns lands in this country?”
“Mr. Hemraj Kissoon, patriarch of the AH&L Kissoon family (no relation to me and a family I don’t know at all except that I know it is a rich, well established Guyanese business), testified that when the MMA scheme was engineered by the Guyana Government in the seventies, his company lost 2000 acres of leased land to the east of the MMA and he wants the Lands Commission to return such to the Kissoon family.
“He said that the family owned the land for more than a hundred years. He went on to state that in the vicinity of the MMA, at the present time, the family possesses 8000 acres leased by the colonial governor.”
So by his own admission, Mr. Kissoon’s family has over 8000 acres and wants the state to give them another 2000. The PPP has continued to prolong the story of these mere 3000 acres that the gentlemen mentioned above got by citing the lands’ closeness to shore base means the value of them are in the hundreds of millions.
But what is wrong with that? It is called investments for profits and all of Guyana should be glad that very small business people would now get a share of the pie that belongs to all of us.
The Muneshwher family bought shore base property in Houston for the coming oil industry at a cost of US$20 million and later announced that it put in a further US$20 million. That is billions of dollars in local currency.
The John Fernandes family has invested hundreds of millions in shore base property too for the coming oil boom. These are only two examples. There must be several more investments like these two. So what is the problem if two or three very small businessmen got a deal from the state and will make a profit out of their small investments?
Could we as citizens of this country in all honesty, criticise that? My concern now is with the hundreds of small applicants who need state land to break into business. For God’s sake, let us help them!

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