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Oct 19, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon
People court their own disaster. For countless years I have composed my KN columns late into the night.
The reason for this is because if I wait until the day grows older and then blackout comes, I have to run down to someone else’s computer to type. So, as is customary, I do my article late at night and send it to Adam Harris early the next day.
This column was not done in the night. I slipped up. On Tuesday, blackout came. This column was typed not in the comfort of my home, but at the Kaieteur News office. So blackout came and I dressed to go out to type my column elsewhere.
I picked up the paper; I read the incredible news of the cost to repair the Arthur Chung Convention Centre. Built at a cost of US$8 million, the APNU-AFC regime will be spending almost US$7 million to repair the building.
This is PPP depravity all over. This country lost its way a long time, and it will die a natural death in the future. I had to go to Kaieteur News to type my article because of a modern deprivation I have endured since 1980. My daughter grew up with it, all citizens over twenty years grew up with it – daily electricity disruption.
In 2016, my family and I have to live with blackouts, and this new government that an entire population put its hopes on, is repairing the Convention Centre to the tune of $1.4 billion.
I am challenging President Granger and Prime Minister Nagamootoo to show me how qualitatively different is their thinking from the PPP’s and how different is their approach to development from the PPP’s.
The Chinese will be putting up part of the money for the repairs. But the government could have requested the Chinese to put the money on a project that is more exigent.
UG needs that money, not the Convention Centre. Cyril Potter’s College needs that money more than the Centre. GPL needs that money more than the Centre. The interior schools need that money more than the Centre. The police force needs that money more than the Centre. Parliament Building needs that money more than the Centre. GWI needs that money more than the Centre.
But wait a minute! Did we not build, at the cost of almost a billion dollars, the Durban Park project? What purpose does that construction serve? Why do we have to spend $1.4 billion on a project that will not impact in any substantial way the improvement of the economy?
Oh, I need to apologize. Maybe I should wait for Minister Cathy Hughes, the President and the Prime Minister to explain to the Guyanese people how this $1.4 billion repair job will impact on the economy. So I shouldn’t jump the gun. But am I not entitled to my opinion? And I am not a dunce in development economics.
I am not a trained economist, but I can assess the effects of financial policies on the economy.
I am saying without hesitation that the school juice project, if it had gone to a local manufacturer, would have been helpful to the economy.
I am saying that the airport stone contract had it gone to a local manufacturer, would have been more helpful to our economy.
I am contending that the large sum assigned to repair the Convention Centre is a misplaced priority. I await the correction to my economic thinking when I hear what the President has to say when he holds his weekly NCN media programme, “The Public Interest.”
Within this context, it is relevant to remind readers that apart from this coruscating rehabilitation of the Centre, the APNU-AFC regime will be spending millions to expand the functions of the Marriott Hotel. This is how a government spends money fifty years after Independence. We are still living inside the sucksand of a mono-cultural economy.
First it was sugar. Sugar is dead. We live on gold. When gold prices dwindle, we fall sick.
But how interesting that we should bring up the concept of the mono-cultural economy.
UG has started a yearly Clive Thomas Lecture. The first delivery will be outstanding professor of development economics, Jay Mandle.
Forty years ago, Mandle wrote his famous book on the pitfalls of the mono-cultural economy. But the irony of all of this is that the man who educated us on the pitfalls of the mono-cultural economy is Clive Thomas himself.
How does Thomas feel as a member of the Government of Guyana, his colleagues spending money on Marriott and the Convention Centre in a mono-cultural economy?
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