Guyana should be riding high, always falls low

Jun 09, 2022 Editorial

Kaieteur News – We have the best of many things. If not the best, then close to it in many respects. The experts point to the reality of our crude oil discoveries and speak in hushed tones about ‘light’ and ‘sweet’ which are the industry’s terms for premium grade fossil fuels beneath our seabed. To make it even better still, our oil for the operators is cheap, as in giveaway, bargain basement, cheap. We should be riding high with oil of that kind of quality, but the sad fact is that we are not, woefully far from it.
We are known to have gold (like our rum) that is in demand all over, because it is world class in composition and texture, a common characteristic of our metal dug up from below rivers and below the ground. Naturally, the expectation is that we ought to be riding high in the sky, except that the truth is we are no better off for it, for the most part. Other than for a few of the well-positioned big-shot local miners, and a group of foreign exploiters of our mineral wealth, Guyanese are not riding high, but trying to keep their heads above the waterline, so low they are, so far behind they are left. Now comes the news involving still another natural resources sector, which is also good, but leaves us in the same boat that is always leaking and threatening to capsize.
The latest lovely news is just as compelling and pride inducing as oil and gold. The caption relays the story of how endlessly rich this country is: “American company boasts of “highest grade” bauxite find in Guyana” (KN June 5). This particular one takes things to the heights, namely, that it is not just high-grade ore, but the find is of the very best, the top of the line represented by “highest grade.” It should be a time of thanksgiving and rejoicing for Guyanese, especially those closely involved in the bauxite sector. Thanksgiving for nature’s bounty and to divine providence (if one is so inclined) for what we find and keep on discovering in Guyana; rejoicing for what this could mean, the possible prospects for this country and its peoples.
The problem is that, that is as far as both go. That is, the thanksgiving and rejoicing, because it is all our workers, hopers, and believers have been doing, since nothing of meaning is coming their way. They get a low paying job, get treated like dogs, and if they raise a fuss is given a swift kick and sent packing. Our hopers about a good life are still hoping and, from every indication, they have as much chance of fulfilling their dreams and aspirations as winning those multimillion dollar prizes that count in a big lottery. The chances of Guyanese for a real high-level standard of life are that remote, despite all this high quality, top class, oil and gold and bauxite and the rest of the natural resource riches that this blessed country of ours has, but we have not touched upon in today’s writing.
For emphasis, we repeat what we represented earlier: this country rides high in the rich substances of its resource endowments, yet the vast majority of our people exist at such low levels. Our elderly pensioners are forced to get by somehow on $28,000 monthly, which may last them a week, if they are thrifty enough and ingenious enough at stretching those dollars and squeezing themselves. Our minimum wage workers are supposed to manage on the equivalent of just over US$200 a month, which vanishes in utilities, rent, and transportation, before they can even get to thinking about food and life-sustaining necessities. Our thousands of public servants count their pennies on one hand, and face their days with dread, in the paycheck-to-paycheck circumstances with which they live. This is not riding high, but of Guyanese living close to the gutter.
Meanwhile, the foreigners comes here and conspire with our sell out leaders, who stab us in the back with these self-destructive deals that drain our riches, while leaving citizens poorer and lower. When Guyanese should be on top of the world, they live in the pits.

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