Extreme riches, extreme poverty

Mar 31, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – When we say it, we are given a blackeye, and a stab in the back. Now that a UN Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) member has pointed to the disparity in wealth in Guyana, perhaps the PPPC Government, with Vice President Jagdeo taking the lead, would introduce remedial policies.

It is this extreme disparity involving the national wealth: the already wealthy get wealthier, and the dreadfully poor forced to cope with a poorer existence. Weak governance in sensitive areas has been identified by the UNHRC as being among disturbing matters. As the majority of Guyanese also know terrible leadership has negatively impacted both the physical landscape and the human hopes now dwindling in the breasts of impoverished citizens.

The UNHRC had three years to listen to, to read about, and watch all that is happening in Guyana, the most talked about country on the planet. There has been a lot to absorb, with no end in sight, when there are so many components of leadership and governance that have gone wrong. This paper has led the way in pointing to the environment that results from the weakness of an impotent Environmental Protection Agency, one minimized to a rubberstamp institution.

The toll on the indigenous people and their way of life, we have covered, and we have continuously highlighted how the oil and other natural resources wealth is bypassing Guyanese. These were some of the issues on which the UNHRC zeroed in and sought answers, given that Guyana is a signatory to both the Paris Agreement and the Escazu regional agreement. The Escazu Agreement has particular significance in that it emphasizes the rights of citizens to access information. The PPPC Government has been vocal about how much it consults with the local population. What it does not say is how much it withholds from the Guyanese public. Guyanese know too little about the many things that they should know, how minute is the access that they have to those matters and issues, and which are a natural part of a healthy governance culture.

Exploitation has rocked Guyana, with those reeling from their efforts at daily survival taking the hardest hits. The natural resource contracts involving the patrimony of the people are an impenetrable PPPC Government secret, with the nation’s wealth going out, and poor Guyanese hanging by a thread. It is the extent of what they know, the harsh experience with which they live. The government is proud of having an EPA that is a global joke, and a corporate dream, while 38.8% of Guyanese struggle to exist on GY$1100 a day. Thanks to the lucrative awards of the PPPC Government to its inner circle, the extreme tilts in its management of a surging oil economy, the cabals of its own (family, friends, and fawning brownnosers), make 100 times that GY$1100 a minute, if not more. The fortunate few know what it is to revel in extreme riches and, at the other extreme, there are those many Guyanese compelled to a situation of extreme poverty.

In response to the UNHRC, Minister Texeira noted the huge sums that her government has allocated for education and healthcare, and increased access to a better quality of life for the indigenous community. No reasonable citizen would deny that budgetary allocations have not been made by the government. Conspicuously missing, however, is that economically distressed indigenous areas and numerous other areas of Guyana do not have enough in their hands to address their most basic needs. Similar to how PPPC Government leaders and pundits speak highly about consultations, they also pinpoint the millions budgeted to enhance various aspects of life. What is covered over, and hustled over, are the missing elements. Consultation is not coming clean or giving the clearest path to need-to-know information. Likewise, building schools and healthcare centers doesn’t do much to ease hunger pangs, or relieve the need for clothing, or help pay all monthly bills. The extremely rich have their mansions and can still eat, drink, and wear whatever delights their hearts. In stark contrast, the extremely poor have their huts and cabins, and struggle for a meal and medicines. This is the dark tale of two countries, the two Guyanas in existence.

extreme, Guyana, poverty, riches, Wealth

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Extreme riches, extreme poverty

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