Sand Mining applications

Mar 16, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Guyanese are on the move with fat, juicy public works contracts, the connected with sweet, enriching job contracts. Those who know how to take advantage of the system line themselves up for contracts that help them prosper; do much better than the average Guyanese man and woman. Recently, a new one kind of setup caught the attention of locals. It had to do with sand mining applications. Even more revealingly, the applications were from two very senior police officers. We have been saying all along that things are tough with public servants, and their numbers include ranks and officers of the Guyana Police Force. Now here is what could be the proof in two top police officers filing applications for sand mining acreage. Sand mining income to supplement the meager income of police officers, no matter that their salary scales and allowances put them over the top, among the bigger earners in Guyana. If they could need to boost their income, or set themselves up for solid retirement days, then it is not too much of a stretch to figure out what the constables and corporals are experiencing at their levels.

The cost of living is killing Guyanese, and policemen and policewomen in Guyana are feeling the pain, crying out for relief, just like the tens of thousands of other public servants. A killer cost of living or otherwise, fears of retirement or no such thing, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo is having none of it, not falling (like he usually does) for any sand mining applications going anywhere. Drop dead, and come to a dead stop right there, was the order that came from Guyana’s chief policymaker, and chief scrutineer of things like these. How others of a like kind escaped his attention is a mystery to which only he has the solution. What we do notice, though, is it is as if Jagdeo is making a serious effort to remake himself, to present a new image to the Guyanese people, and before the world. Without a doubt, he has a long way to go, and the going is sure to be a long and hard journey, which could be sabotaged by his old impulses that have caused both he and Guyanese so much distress.

The seemingly reborn and reconstructed Jagdeo is refreshing in parts. No more of the nonsense, no longer any of these dealings that have haunted his presidency, and now his stewardship of the nation’s oil patrimony. The new Jagdeo even went so far as to part company with ExxonMobil on its 52% total profit concoction. He embarrassed the company by calling its 52% number “misleading.” Misleading is a nice word for falsifying, a word easier on the ear than probably flat-out, determined lying. Now the new and revived, the newly recalibrated, Jagdeo looked internally and didn’t like what he saw. “It’s not going to happen”, insisted Jagdeo. Then he punctured many expectations in people with weight in this country. “Let me be clear that the Government of Guyana on the highway has put a hold on all the sandpits…” It was a chief policymaker speaking in the boldest and clearest language that Guyanese, living or gone elsewhere, can remember him being. It would be so much more inspiring to hear Bharrat Jagdeo speak with the same power and authority when it is the national fantastic oil wealth that is involved.

Jagdeo even gave the media reasons for the denial of all sand mining in the Linden Highway area. Silica City is coming, and so are new towns on that now prime piece of Guyana 26 miles plus from the capital. This is all good and sweet sounding. But Jagdeo is nothing if not a wily operator. He may not be a smooth one, but he is a slick one. For when a man with the record of the Vice President (and as president and minister and what not) speaks with such forcefulness, then there has to be interest in what he could be really up to, is in the cards for Guyana. We absorb his encouraging words, wait for his supporting works. Meanwhile, the two senior police officers have to retreat and rebalance their visions.

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Applications, Editorial, Guyanese, locals, Sand Mining

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