Jobs, poverty, and the drug trade

Oct 25, 2025 Editorial, News

(Kaieteur News) – In a previous editorial, we examined the PPP/C Government’s obsession with trumpeting “jobs, jobs, and more jobs.” President Irfaan Ali lights up when he speaks about the jobs his administration claims to have created. Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo does the same, brimming with self-congratulation at every opportunity.

But as we noted before, and now again, there is a difference between jobs created and livelihoods improved. And into this conversation stepped the United States Government, whose 2025 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report released earlier this year cut straight to the bone:

“The economic appeal of the drug trade in Guyana, with its high poverty rate and low paying public sector jobs, leads individuals to become involved in illicit activities and hinders efforts to curb trafficking.”

That statement didn’t come from this newspaper, it came from Washington.

The truth is that yes, more jobs have been created. But the uncomfortable fact remains: they are largely low-level, low-paying, and menial. A day’s work for $3,000 to $5,000 cannot lift a family out of poverty, especially in an economy inflated by oil wealth. Meanwhile, the narcotics trade offers easy money — fast, risky, and far more lucrative than honest labour. The arithmetic is brutally simple: one can grind for survival or gamble for fortune. Too many are choosing the latter.

The U.S. report’s reference to high poverty as a driver of the drug trade is another painful truth the government prefers not to hear. The PPP/C’s public narrative focuses on buildings rising across Georgetown, highways stretching to the horizon, and “transformational” infrastructure projects. Yet, behind the gleaming skyline, there’s a shadow that grows darker — persistent poverty in a land of new oil wealth.

Prosperity has come, but not for all. It has pooled in the pockets of the well-connected, the insiders, and the loyal few. For too many others, poverty has become the unspoken condition of Guyana’s “growth story.” That is the ugly secret the government wishes would stay buried, but it cannot be paved over with concrete or drowned out by press conferences.

The U.S. report went even further, highlighting “nepotism in the public sector and political entities” as major obstacles in the fight against drug trafficking. Those words; political entities cut deep. The implication is unmistakable: corruption isn’t a symptom; it’s a system.

The PPP/C leadership boasts of transparency and accountability. Yet corruption continues to stain the institutions tasked with upholding the law. From law enforcement to licensing, too many hands are compromised, and too many eyes look the other way. It is a “pay and play” environment where everyone from the small hustler to the big official knows the going rate.

The result is the same: poverty drives desperation, desperation fuels the drug trade, and corruption ensures it continues unchecked.

The government can protest all it wants, but the math doesn’t lie, the reality doesn’t fade, and the world is watching. The U.S. has said aloud what Guyanese whisper every day, that beneath the rhetoric of jobs and growth lies a nation struggling to reconcile its wealth with its widening inequality.

The PPP/C now has its work cut out for it. The time for foot-stomping and finger-pointing is long past. What Guyana needs is not another announcement about job numbers, but a genuine effort to lift the quality of life and the quality of governance in this so-called “One Guyana.”

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