Workers must insist on their rightful share

May 03, 2026 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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(Kaieteur News) – The government has issued its invitations—Expressions of Interest, the document is being studied by those whose cup is already overflowing. These persons regard opportunity not as an entitlement. And yet, curiously absent are the men and women – the workers – whose labour underwrites the nation itself.

No prospectus for them. No structured avenue for their participation. No serious attempt to enlist the savings of ordinary Guyanese, who, taken together, have quietly accumulated billions in the nation’s banks—funds that languish in low-interest accounts, idle not for lack of ambition but for lack of access to the opportunities that are being given to the favoured bourgeoise.

Here is capital, owned by the small man, waiting for a door that is never opened. Instead, the government has chosen to knock, once again, on the doors of the already affluent.

The fertilizer plant and gas bottling facility are, by all reasonable expectation, engines of profit. They are industrial annuities. One would think such assets, born of the people’s national resources and sustained by public policy, might first be offered to the public itself. But that would require a different philosophy of governance, one that sees citizens not as spectators to development but as its rightful shareholders.

Instead, we are treated to a familiar arrangement, one that Guyanese have seen before in ventures like the Guyana Marriott Hotel Georgetown and the Berbice River Bridge. These projects were dressed in the language of national progress but their financial model was structured in ways that concentrated ownership among a narrow syndicate. The risk, meanwhile, is generously socialized. Loans are extended, often with the quiet backing of public institutions such as the National Insurance Scheme, or drawn from the Treasury itself. In effect, the public finances the bulk of the venture but the private sector reaps most of the rewards. It is capitalism with a safety net, but not for the worker.

The arithmetic is as elegant as it is troubling. Public money lowers the risk profile, making the investment irresistible to those already equipped to invest. The profits, when they arrive—as they almost certainly will—flow upward, reinforcing a pattern of ownership that is less an accident than a design. Meanwhile, the average worker is invited to take comfort in words that sound impressive but do not deposit dividends into his or her bank book.

If the President is sincere in his stated desire for workers to own assets—and there is no reason to doubt the sincerity of the sentiment—why were workers not given the first option to invest in the gas bottling plant and the fertilizer plant? Why was the architecture of participation not built before the gates were opened to the capital of rich investors? Why must inclusion always arrive late after the lucrative positions have already been claimed?

The answer, though seldom spoken aloud, is not difficult to discern. The economy has long been cornered by a class that understands the power of access—access to information, to capital, to decision-makers. And as new opportunities emerge, particularly those fueled by oil revenues, that same class is moving with practiced efficiency to grab more and more and more.

Guyana, in this light, begins to resemble a fattened calf, one that is nourished by national resources, prepared for slaughter, and served to those who have long held the carving knives.

The tragedy is not merely economic; it is psychological. A people accustomed to exclusion may begin to accept it as natural. They may come to believe that ownership is a privilege reserved for the rich, that their role is to work, to wait, and to be grateful for whatever crumbs fall from the table. This is how inequality perpetuates itself. Not only through policy but through perception and the inevitable acceptance of this perception as reality.

And let us dispense with the comforting illusion that “civil society” will ride to the rescue. Many of its most visible actors—though not all—are themselves entangled in the same networks of influence and advantage. Their advocacy, while eloquent, often stops short of challenging the structures from which they benefit. The same can be said, with regrettable frequency, of some of our political leaders.

If there is to be a different outcome, it will not be delivered as a gift. Workers must insist upon their place. Not at the margins, but at the center of the economic life of the nation. At least ninety percent of these national projects should be made available for public ownership, structured in a way that allows ordinary citizens to invest meaningfully. And if the capital cannot be immediately raised, then let the government do what it has already done in other contexts: deploy oil revenues not as fleeting cash grants, but as equity—shares held in trust for the people, dividends accruing over time, wealth built rather than spent.

Anything less is a continuation of the same old arrangement, one that is faithful to the habits of exclusion. The question is not whether Guyana can afford to broaden ownership to workers. It is whether it can afford not to.

(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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