Infrastructure versus inhabitants

Mar 02, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

H@rd Truths by GHK Lall

Kaieteur News – Infrastructure is about what is unmoving, unbreathing, and unliving. It has no temperature, no pulse, no sense of feeling. In the sum of its monuments to progress, and grand spending, it is about what is stone cold, dead wood, and steel and glass caskets. But the race for more and more infrastructure works has become the highest priority in Guyana. There is an urgency about spending money on infrastructure, like the Chinese did with their Great Wall, no matter the human toll. Like the Egyptian Pharoah did, regardless of what it took in flesh and blood casualties. We still admire those iconic emblems of the worlds of antiquity and mystery. No expense is spared, no provision is overlooked here, to get the most out of infrastructure projects (and that could be read in any way, with an emphasis on the traditional and political). The mentality of those behind such priorities is to build now, so that the opportunities to get could be had now.

GHK Lall

In contrast, there are those who move, breathe, and live with intensifying difficulty in this society. They are the people of Guyana, and with an emphasis on the bulk of them that form the broad cohort of poor and struggling, limping, and licking their hurts. When compared to the lavishness that is heaped on inanimate infrastructure in Guyana, the inhabitants of this nation come out a distant second. Theirs is the grimness of an extended experience that should not be. Not in this golden age of oil. They feel the hard pinch of deep piercings, but their cries are largely ignored. The attitude of President Ali and Vice President Jagdeo is: tek dah, and count yuself lucky that is nah less, that our generosity delivers this level charity. It is charity, is it not? At least, when compared to what has been spent, and is to be spent, on infrastructure.

Undoubtedly, massive infrastructure undertakings have place and merits. I march past with eyes fixed straight ahead, so as to avoid getting entangled in local traditions of self-help. Think towards, quality of work delivered, and costs (original and additional to taxpayers). Those aside, I cannot endorse infrastructure spending at levels identified, and subscribe to the miserly, niggling, and paltry allocations for direct relief to the people. Those groping for a way out of the cost-of-living, and wider economic morass. There has to be more of a balance, a spending gap involving the nonhuman and human that is narrower. Considering the extravagant amounts approved in the last two national budgets for cement and steel, and paint and putty, versus what has been earmarked to provide relief to those pushed to drag themselves through each challenging day, I come to this place. Thanks to Excellency Ali and Supreme Excellency Jagdeo, there is infrastructure enrichment in one pan of the scale, and human impoverishment in the other.

For those who applaud the hundreds of billions in budgetary outlays for roads and bridges, and under the broad, expansive tent, of capital expenditure, here is a little illustration extracted from real life. If Guyanese are still capable of thinking, still have a heart, the logic is irrefutable. If they still have some residual honesty in them, the commonsense is infallible.

The government builds a sprawling network of public projects. The roads and bridges bring the world right to the doorstep. What could be more energizing than that, more fulfilling…. Now here is the dark side of all that costly modernization, all those haloed expressions of President Ali’s version of wisdom, and Vice President Jagdeo’s supposed smarts. The roads connect the men in their carts, their laden, open-backed trucks, to the villagers, among whom are pensioners, minimum wage workers, public service contributors, and their families. The calls are compelling: ‘bangamary and coarse shrimp.’ Or ‘baigan and ba-gee” (eggplant and spinach, for the enlightenment of Alistair Routledge and his kind). Now for the handicap, and it is a crippling one, a round-the-clock one: the villagers, pensioners, and cast of workers do not have money in their pockets to partake of the pumpkin and squash, and the catfish and korass. What then Comrade Ali? What about them, dear Comrade Jagdeo? It should not have eluded attention that the good comrade doctor Singh has been all but dismissed, and for the best of reasons. As bright a bulb he (or was), his on and off switch is controlled by those mentioned before. His surge is dependent upon the whims of others. He is the messenger, and like President Ali, he is a messenger without a message.

In language that should be familiar to esteemed economist, Dr. Jagdeo, the people have the best infrastructure, but they have no purchasing power. In fact, given the ever-lengthening spirals in the cost of surviving in Guyana, their already severely constricted purchasing power is rapidly diminishing, despite budgeted relief measures. Indeed, the argument could be made for velocity of money, but it is what knocks the people flat on their backs, blows them out of participation, in this infrastructure-oriented oil country. In sum, infrastructure puts Guyana on the map, but poverty puts poor Guyanese on the bread line. Perhaps, this is President Ali’s and Vice President Jagdeo’s idea of destroying the Guyanese people in order to save them. Infrastructure is wonderful, but not when the poor have no money, can’t use them to buy anything.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

Egyptian Pharoah, GHK Lall, H@rd Truths, inhabitants, temperature

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