The Minister should withdraw this statement

Oct 03, 2021 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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Kaieteur News – The Minister of Finance made an absolutely bizarre statement during a ceremony to launch a project which will provide electricity to 30,000 hinterland homes. The statement made by the Minister was reported in yesterday’s edition and was also aired on television newscasts.
The Minister is reported to have said, “On a deeply personal level, to those 30,000 families, delivering electricity to their home for the first time will literally be the single biggest thing that will happen to them in an entire generation.” The Minister should immediately retract that statement, and if he does not the President should demand that he does so.
The statement is highly insulting to Guyana’s hinterland persons, the vast majority of whom are indigenous. It suggests that the provision of electricity to their homes would be the best thing to happen to them in an entire generation – normally considered a span of 30 years.
So far there has been no response from the indigenous communities over the statement. But coming, as it did, at the conclusion of the Amerindian Month is all the more disturbing.
How can the provision of electricity be deemed the best thing which will happen to 30,000 mainly indigenous hinterland families in 30 years? However way you look at this, it is an admission that those families do not have much to look forward to under the PPP/C.
But Guyana is an oil-producing state and the President keeps harping about how every section of the Guyanese population will benefit from its oil revenues. Yet, the provision of electricity is being designated as the single best thing that will happen to 30,000 hinterland residents in 30 years.
Electricity should not be an achievement; it should be a right of all peoples in the 21st century. Indeed there is a discussion taking place internationally as to whether access to energy – reliable and affordable – should not be a contingent right under the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights which entitles persons to the life, shelter, education and health.
If access to electricity is the single best thing which will happen to these residents in 30 years, then what is in store for these residents over the next 30 years? Or if it will be the best thing which has happened to them over the last 30 years, then what really did the PP/C achieve while running Guyana for 23 years prior to losing the elections of 2015.
This is not to understate the significance of hinterland electricity. The hinterland is light years behind the coastland in terms of access to electricity but thus alone, cannot be justifiable reasons for believing that access to electricity for 30,000 families is the best thing which will happen to them in 30 years.
The PPP/C’s hinterland electricity programme has been an insult to Amerindians. The PPP/C had provided under an IDB programme with solar panels. It provided electricity for homes for a few hours each night but the light was no better than that provided by a kerosene lamp.
The PPP/C was in power since 1992 but it was only in 2005 that the hinterland residents really began to see the “light” under the PPP/C’s Hinterland Electricity Programme. Fifteen years later, we are being told that there are still hinterland residents who are without access to energy and that for them this is the best thing which will happen to them for a generation.
It is not clear whether the PPP/C has the same plan now as it did then – that is the provision of home solar power systems which run for only a few hours and provide limited illumination. Or whether the best thing to happen to them will be sufficient power to run a refrigerator, microwave and water pump – things which are now considered as basic amenities.
However, Guyana’s indigenous peoples must be concerned. When the PPP/C assumed office in August 2020, it announced that it was procuring 25,000 solar units for hinterland communities. If these are the same unit as was done under the IDB programme, the beneficiaries would be better off using kerosene lamps because those solar power lamps were no better than the lamps.
The best thing that can happen to Guyana’s indigenous peoples would be for them to be able to live in modern communities with modern amenities and have total control over the management of these communities. However, the tendency of all governments has been to offer incremental development to indigenous communities rather than empowering them and allowing them full control over the lands and the management of their own affairs.
(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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