WHERE IS UNCLE ADAM?

Aug 09, 2010 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

It is moments like these that you miss Uncle Adam. The government is about to dump some really valuable shares on the market, a quarrel has broken out over the construction of a hotel in which the government is expected to be a partner, it is believed that a local airline is in the works, and then there is that cable which is supposed to be sourced from Brazil.
The 20% government shareholding in the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company is about to be sold en bloc by the government. It will fetch a hefty price tag which can only be afforded by those who have their hands and pockets full.
But more wealth has never been a curse and so these shares are going to make the new owners richer.
Then there is talk in the air about the fiber optic cable from Brazil which is supposed to be brought in for a major project by the government and which in the process could see some 90,000 free computers being given away to poor families along with help for bandwidth services.
While all of these developments have raised questions for which answers are required, the top journalist, without doubt, in Guyana, Uncle Adam stirred the proverbial ants nest and then left these shores.
Uncle Adam wrote a nice piece a few weeks ago about getting answers being harder than pulling teeth and then disappeared on his well earned and much deserved vacation in the United States of America.
The joke within Kaieteur News is that the publisher has missed Uncle Adam so much that the two are to hook up at a location in the Caribbean Sea this weekend.
Uncle Adam deserves his little holiday but Uncle Glenn intends to ensure that any holiday Uncle Adam has is a working holiday so the two of them are going to stay at a Marriot Hotel so that they can question the top boys there about that chain’s branding of the controversial hotel to be built in Kingston.
Talking about hotels, from the way in which the government is voicing off about the hotel and the prospects of tourism, you would believe that a hotel is going to be established in Wakenaam.
In a headline last Saturday, the Stabroek News said that the recently held Wakenaam Night would boost tourism in that area. Now there is a funny story about that headline.
Uncle Glenn has a habit of waking up groggy and the first thing he likes to do is look at the newspapers. Still half asleep last Saturday morning, he picked up the newspaper and read that particular headline, except that in his groggy state, his mind saw the words terrorism instead of tourism.
He sprung from his bed wondering what was happening to his home village. It was only after he looked again that he realised that his mind was playing tricks on him and that the article was about the prospects of tourism in his home area.
But what tourism, he asked himself, was going to be promoted in that area. Wakenaam is being depopulated. You can hardly find persons to live in Wakenaam much less to promote tourism.
Uncle Glenn has his family home there. He has trouble finding someone to stay in the place free because the economic situation on the island is not good.
Yet the government hopes to promote domestic tourism. Well to do this there will be a need for a hotel.
But even if a hotel is built, who is going to stay in the hotel? How can you promote domestic tourism when there is no hotel and who is going to build a hotel when there is no economic basis to do so.
There is of course potential for economic diversification on the island. The island has traditionally been agricultural based and the main crop has always been rice. But rice has its problems and has had its ups and downs.
Instead of building an airstrip on the island, which will only help those in the airline business who do charter flights, instead of wishful thinking about tourism, there needs to be drafted a development plan for the island, one of the main planks of which must be the diversification of agricultural production.
But that is not a priority at all these days when it comes to Wakenaam. Instead, the focus is on building a runway and talk about domestic tourism.
A one night activity may have encouraged such ideas but it will take a great deal more planning for Wakenaam to once again become a flourishing community.