Latest update April 25th, 2024 12:59 AM
Mar 28, 2010 Letters
Dear Editor,
Would Brazils’ new highway across Guyana bring any prosperity for all the people of Guyana or would it serve to benefit the few short-sighted elite?
The impact on how the new highway will affect the local and indigenous communities should have been carefully assessed and impartially weighed-up. This should include law and order, environmental protection; effective policing and border and immigration controls. It is incumbent on any decent, caring and accountable government, which is concerned about putting its people first, as opposed to the self-interests of politicians.
The U.S. is spending a vast fortune to stem the vicious drugs trade from across its own borders with Mexico, where a deadly drugs war is raging against the entrenched drugs barons, determined to protect their turf at any cost.
Hundreds of lives are being lost and many more families are suffering as the country pays the heavy penalty for the flow of drugs. This sober fact should not have escaped the attention of Guyana’s politicians; even the most laid-back, inept ones.
However, securing and defending the country’s porous borders are not regarded as priority issues, as evident with the recent rejection of the UK funding. The funding would have helped to plug the glaring gap in security and policing and to provide vital and essential training in the delivery of effective security and policing for Guyana.
The Guyana Government is fully aware of the acute and dire situation, which the country is facing, including the indigenous communities in the hinterland and forest areas. A past president of the GGDMA, Afro Alfonso, told the body that, ‘the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the GGMC need to do more work in determining how many Brazilians may be working legally in Guyana.
He compared the situation with the treatment of Guyanese in Barbados noting that Guyanese are turned back in a quick manner by immigration authorities there.
Alfonso said that in 2008, there were some 271 licensed dredges registered with the GGMC but noted that there are approximately 9,000 dredges currently in operation in the mining industry, some of which are being operated by the Brazilians. (Alva Solomon, SN July 10, 09).
When there are some 9,000 Brazilians and foreign mining interests operating in Guyana without a licence, then it does not need a genius in economics to tell us that there is a massive, hidden parallel economy, which is flourishing in Guyana. If the number of unlicensed mining operations is a rough indicator of the size of a hidden economy, then the size of this hidden economy could be up to 30 times the magnitude of the actual figure as declared for this sector of the public economy.
In exchange the foreign mining interests are creating havoc to the country’s forest and its soil.
After exhausting one area, they move on to other lucrative areas to leave vast tracts of deforestation, soil degradation, pollution, mercury contamination and malaria ponds; with malaria on the rise and taking a heavy toll on the people.
At the same time, the country is being portrayed as a poverty-stricken state by the politicians, and to receive hand-outs of foreign aid and subsidies, with little end-benefits reaching the people.
Would this mentality change for a better Guyana, or is the Mexico-type drugs scenario set to explode, as the lucrative Brazilian highway begins to tear through the jungle to establish a foothold on the English-speaking Caribbean?
Most of northern Brazil is in the grips of poverty. The area is on the verge of turning into a desert, with forest and soil degradation becoming widespread.
The area is also being threatened with acute water-shortage, and which is no great distance from Guyana.
Local communities in the region are being forced to adopt austere poverty economy, and to stave-off inflationary pressures on food prices and agricultural produce.
This raises questions about the real benefits that Brazil can bring to Guyana, when it is doing little for its own people in the north.
Why does it a need a highway through Guyana’s territory to access the Caribbean, when this can be adequately provided through its northern territory in Brazil.
Also this region is in desperate need for an urgent boost to its economy and to rescue it from the grips of poverty?
Also why is Guyana chosen for such a highway, when Venezuela has a far better infrastructure and shares a common, Latin-based language with Brazil? Will the Brazilian highway become the Trojan horse, which will spearhead Brazil’s expansion into Guyana; and to exert control and to finally remove all vestiges of the only English-speaking state from mainland South American?
Both Brazil and Venezuela have vehemently subscribed to the Argentine’s claim over the Falklands.
Guyana may be next on their agenda, and as their gateway to seek greater influence and control over the English-speaking Caribbean.
Mac Mahase
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