Berbice and Jagdeo’s legacy

Jan 24, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Peeping Tom…

Kaieteur News-By any reckoning, Region 6 should have been Guyana’s most prosperous region. It has a rich history, has produced some of Guyana’s most learned individuals and is endowed with untold resources. Yet, to survey its modern state of affairs is to witness a paradox—a region of potential abundance yet riddled with despair, its vitality sapped by systemic neglect.

How did Region 6, henceforth referred to as Berbice, reach this state of affairs? This is no accident of history but a consequence of the misguided policies of the Jagdeo presidency and, by extension, the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPPC) government. Jagdeo’s tenure as president was marked by sweeping pronouncements of progress, grandiose visions of development, and promises to elevate every corner of Guyana into the modern age. Yet in Berbice, these promises have proven to be empty rhetoric.

If his legacy in Region 6 were to be judged by population decline alone, it would tell a damning tale. Under Jagdeo, the population of Region 6 fell by more than 12%, a staggering figure that speaks to mass exodus rather than mass prosperity. Cumulatively, under the PPP/C, the decline exceeds 20%.  No other region in Guyana suffered a negative population growth between 1991 and 2012. It is a dubious distinction that is a direct result of economic stagnation, social dysfunction, and a persistent sense of abandonment.

The statistics tell only part of the story. Behind the numbers lie the lives of families who depend on remittances from loved ones overseas—lifelines that stave off complete collapse. In Berbice, the economy is buoyed not by the fruits of local labour but by the hard-earned dollars of those who have fled its shores. Without these remittances, many households would struggle to survive. There are no less than 7 licensed money transfer agencies in Region 6 alone.

The World Bank’s 2023 Migration and Development Brief, titled “Leveraging Diaspora Finances for Private Capital Mobilization”, revealed a significant and steady increase in remittances to Guyana, even in the post-oil era. The report highlighted that remittances grew from US$380 million in 2019 to US$429 million in 2020, reaching US$548 million in both 2021 and 2022. This is more than the export earnings for sugar and rice  combined.

The region’s poverty rate is high. The Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper: 2011-2015, showed that 28.5% of Region 6’s population lived in poverty. But worse than poverty is its stark and unforgiving inequality. The bright-eyed school-leaver in Berbice confronts a bleak reality. Young people face high unemployment, scarce opportunities, and an education system riddled with failures. The majority of students fail to matriculate, and the dropout and absenteeism rates are a source of concern. The latest available date shows the school drop-out rate for Region 6 was 3 times the national average.

And even those who manage to complete secondary school, the prospects are not good. The dream is not of thriving in Berbice but of escaping it, preferably to the distant shores of America or Canada.

Region 6 is not merely a casualty of neglect; it is a crucible of despair. Berbice has earned the unenviable title of the “suicide capital of the world,” a grim reflection of the hopelessness that pervades the region. The New Amsterdam Hospital alone recorded 114 cases of attempted suicide in 2013, two years after Jagdeo left office.

The sugar industry, once a foundation of Berbice’s economy and the major employer in the region, has been gutted. The narrative spun by the PPP/C is one of blame-shifting, pointing fingers at the APNU for the layoffs of 7,000 sugar workers. But the truth is more insidious: more workers exited the sugar industry under the PPP/C than during APNU’s tenure. The wounds inflicted on the industry were not sudden but sustained, a slow bleed that left Berbicians adrift.

This is Jagdeo’s legacy—a legacy not of empowerment but of evisceration. Berbice, the region that has been reduced to a cautionary tale. Its decline is emblematic of the broader trajectory of the PPP/C under Jagdeo’s stewardship. His grand rhetoric masks an abject failure to deliver substantive change. While the rest of the country grappled with development, however uneven, Berbice languished in a state of arrested progress.

The decline of Berbice cannot be viewed in isolation; it is a microcosm of leadership failures that prioritized patronage over progress, optics over outcomes. The PPP/C’s policies under Jagdeo were rooted in expediency.  In Berbice, this translated to token gestures and hollow promises that failed to address the structural challenges plaguing the region.

For that woman appearing on a reel on Facebook and others who wax lyrical about Jagdeo’s contributions to Berbice, a simple question suffices: what exactly has he done? The evidence points to a legacy of neglect, a pattern of abandonment that has left the region bereft of hope and opportunity. Jagdeo’s legacy in Berbice is written in the language of decline, despair, and disillusionment. It is a legacy that stands as a stark reminder of what happens when leadership loses sight of its purpose. Berbice deserves better, and so does Guyana.

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

(Berbice and Jagdeo’s legacy)

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• Peeping Tom, People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPPC), Private Capital Mobilization, Region 6, Remittances

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