Workers should not settle for ‘leff-leff’

May 02, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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(Kaieteur News) – Imagine inviting everyone to dinner and then allowing only the wealthiest guests to eat, while the rest are encouraged to admire the cutlery and wait patiently for “future dining opportunities.”

Now, I am told that in Guyana, the government has invited Expressions of Interest for investment in a fertilizer plant and a gas bottling facility. Now these are not lemonade stands. These are the economic equivalent of discovering oil in your backyard—except instead of keeping it, the government is politely asking wealthy strangers if they’d like to own it for you.

And here is where my anxiety begins.

Because somewhere, in a modest home, a worker is waking up at 5 a.m., contributing to the nation’s productivity, paying taxes, and generally doing all the things we romantically associate with “building a country.” And yet, when it comes time to distribute ownership of the country’s most lucrative assets, he is not invited to the table. He is told, instead, to wait. Investment vehicles are coming. Soon. Eventually. Possibly before retirement, but let’s not rush these things.

This is a bit like promising someone a lifeboat while quietly selling all the boats to people who already own yachts.

Now, I understand the argument—capital, expertise, efficiency, all those words that make economists feel important and the rest of us slightly drowsy. But let me ask a simple question: if these ventures are so profitable that they must be opened to investors immediately, why were ordinary workers not given the first opportunity to participate? Why was the opening act reserved for those who already have front-row tickets to everything?

It’s a curious sequence of events. First, the government says, “We will create opportunities for the ordinary man to invest.” Then, before those opportunities materialise, it sends out invitations to those who do not need them. And finally, it reassures the rest of the population that their turn is coming. This is not so much an economic strategy as it is a masterclass in suspense.

One begins to suspect that “investment vehicles” may be like buses in a dream—you are told they exist; you wait for them earnestly, but somehow, they never arrive at your stop.

And let us be honest: ownership matters. It is the difference between earning a wage and building wealth. Workers do not lack ambition; they lack access. Give them the same opportunity to invest, and you might find that they are quite capable of becoming the very thing they are currently excluded from being—owners.

Why should the profits from these national assets flow upward to those who already possess considerable resources? Why should workers be expected to celebrate economic growth that they can only observe from a distance?  It is a peculiar form of patriotism that asks people to cheer for a game in which they are not allowed to play.

There is also something slightly disingenuous about promising inclusion while practising exclusion. If the intention was always to involve ordinary citizens, then the mechanisms for their participation should have been established first, not second. Otherwise, it begins to look less like a plan and more like an apology waiting to happen.

When a nation’s wealth is distributed in such a way that the majority feel like spectators, it creates a quiet resentment. Not the loud, dramatic kind that makes headlines, but the slow-burning variety that lingers in conversations, in workplaces, in the private arithmetic of people calculating what they contribute versus what they receive.

Surely, there is a better way. A way in which workers are not handed leftovers but are invited to the head table. A way in which ownership is not the exclusive privilege of the already wealthy but a shared opportunity. After all, if these plants are truly the engines of future prosperity, then it seems only fair that the people who power the nation should also have a stake in its rewards.

Otherwise, we risk creating an economy where the few grow richer and the many are told to be patient. Such an arrangement has never, in the long history of human dissatisfaction, ended particularly well.

And so, one might gently suggest that any party or politician aspiring to government should make it abundantly clear that assets of this scale, born from the nation’s resources, must belong, in meaningful part, to its people. And if they do not, then they will be nationalised without compensation.

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

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• fertilizer plant, gas bottling facility, Peeping Tom, workers

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