Latest update April 23rd, 2024 12:59 AM
Jan 26, 2014 APNU Column, Features / Columnists
The Cuyuni-Mazaruni Region, greater in extent than either the Kingdom of the Netherlands or the Kingdom of Denmark, is a sleeping giant that is being devitalised by governmental disregard.
The Region’s administrative centre, Bartica, is over 170 years old but is denied township status. Its mining, logging and tourism resources have been exploited for over a century and continue to enrich the national treasury, but its physical infrastructure is inadequate for such vast territory. Its small, scattered population, comprising mainly persons of Akawaio and Arecuna descent, is vulnerable to criminal violence, human trafficking and environmental hazard.
The economic potential, precarious security and political importance of the Region require a new approach to governance. A comprehensive development plan is needed to exploit the material resources in a sustainable manner and to improve the quality of life for residents. The Region faces numerous challenges.
Reckless mining practices have created health hazards. Studies funded by the Canadian International Development Agency through the Guyana Environmental Capacity Development Project showed that 89 to 96 per cent of the population surveyed in one village – Isseneru – had almost double the reference level for humans of mercury contamination as recently as October 2013. High waters in the waterways occasionally lead to flooding owing to which, cassava and other staple crops rot in the ground and create food crises.
The presence of Brazilian and other foreign mining companies has hardly provided relief from high youth unemployment. Qualified young people, in the absence of new investments, seek low-level jobs in the mining and logging industries or migrate to neighbouring Venezuela or other regions in search of work.
Household expenses in the Upper Mazaruni are at their highest level ever. The cost of buying manufactured goods, much of which is flown by aircraft from the coastland, is prohibitive. Gasoline, for example, sells for $2,800 – $3.000 per gallon at Kamarang making riverine transport expensive. The cost of the one-hour aircraft flight from Ogle to Kamarang is about $28,000, inflating the cost of commodities. The standard of living – measured by the cost of essential goods, net household income, life expectancy, access to health care and human safety – is low for many of the Region’s residents.
Indigenous issues remain unsettled. The Region’s toshaos have resisted the People’s Progressive Party Civic administration on a wide range of land and other local issues. Toshaos – mainly of Arau, Batavia, Chinoweng, Isseneru, Jawalla, Kaburi, Kaikan, Kako, Kangaruma, Karatabo, Karrau, Kurutuku, Paruima, Phillipai, Ominaik, Tasserine, Waramadong and Warawatta – collectively expressed “great displeasure” over the conduct of proceedings at the National Toshaos Council Conference last year.
The Toshaos said that the way that the conference was managed undermined their right to freely speak on issues affecting their communities and to freely express their views on issues which affect them and would have provided an avenue to arrive at possible solutions which would improve their lives.
Several communities – Paruima, Waramadong, Jawalla, Kako, Phillipai and Warawatta – had filed a suit against the Government in 1998 claiming land in the Upper Mazaruni which they said was traditionally theirs.
The Region’s obsolescent physical infrastructure is inadequate. The 180 km-long Bartica-Potaro trail, which was built over a hundred years ago, links Bartica in the Cuyuni-Mazaruni Region to Mahdia in the Potaro-Siparuni Region, but is in dire need of reconstruction.
The Parika-Bartica river-boat service cannot cope with the current needs of the two expanding riverine townships. The PPPC administration, nine years ago in 2005, had promised to explore the prospects of establishing new road links and improving existing ones to enhance access to the Region, but little has been done.
Public services are woeful. There are only three secondary schools in the entire Region. The Waramadong Secondary School is overcrowded and the staff is insufficient for the estimated 500 students. Attainment has been adversely affected by the large number of dropouts from the primary and secondary schools and of failures at the National Grade Six Assessment examinations.
The main hospital – the Bartica Regional Hospital – is underequipped and understaffed.
A ‘river ambulance’ is needed to service the riverine areas. Hospitals further inland occasionally run out of drugs to treat prevalent, everyday complaints.
Owing to the hospitals’ shortcomings, complicated medical cases have to be referred to the Georgetown Public Hospital, a process that involves hours of travel by river and road and a prolonged stay in the city before patients return to the Region.
Public security is parlous. The Region’s security problems are rooted in the PPPC administration’s failure to comprehend the scale of the hinterland landscape. The frequency of fatal aircraft accidents and boat collisions; the prevalence of trafficking in persons and the incidence of armed robberies and everyday banditry are notorious.
The Guyana Police Force’s sub-divisional headquarters at Bartica, however, is ill-equipped to respond promptly to violent crimes, especially in the Region’s gold- and diamond-mining districts.
The Cuyuni-Mazaruni Region should not be allowed to degenerate into a ‘Cinderella’ province. This important part of Guyana’s territory deserves a development plan to meet its social, economic and political needs. Promises by then President Bharrat Jagdeo when he met members of the business community in Bartica, in July 2005, were never intended to develop this important Region.
There should be, now, a new Town Council for the administrative centre – Bartica – and a Development Corporation for the Cuyuni-Mazaruni Region to harness its economic potential, encourage investment and, most of all, to protect the people from environmental hazard and criminal violence.
LISTEN HOW JAGDEO WILL MAKE ALL GUYANESE RICH!!!
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