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Jagdeo praises Amerindians for making use of small amounts of money
– wants coastlanders to follow suit
Kaieteur News – Vice-President (VP), Bharrat Jagdeo on Tuesday highly praised Amerindian villages at the ongoing National Toshaos Council Conference for being able to make good use of the “relatively small amounts of money” that his government has given them as grants.
The Toshaos and village leaders were at the time reporting what they were able to achieve with a mere $1M the government had granted them for sport development, when the VP interjected.
Vice President Bharrat Jagde on Tuesday at National Toshaos Council Conference (NTCC)
“It’s amazing how much people have been able to accomplish in these communities using relatively small sums of money”, Jagdeo said while adding that he wants coastlanders to take a page out of their book. “Coastal people don’t do voluntary work, everything you (the government) got to do, even weed the grass on the ground,” the VP continued before iterating “for those of us who live on the coast we should take a lesson from what these people have been able to do.”
“On the coastal area people are always complaining even if the grass grows a little bit they always complain,” he noted.
Although the Toshaos were able to upgrade some of their grounds with needed infrastructure they still made it clear to Jagdeo that the money received is only “a small change” and is not sufficient to complete some of their projects. One Toshao said he was left without money to pay workmen (men from his village) to build a pavilion at his village’s sports ground. Others noted that price for materials at location is high and to fly them in is expensive too.
The Government at the NTCC committed to giving them another $1M and when some of them opined that it might still not be enough, Jagdeo, despite acknowledging that the grants are “relatively small amounts of money” advised that they can use some of their “LCDS Money,” (Carbon Credit Funds).
Some 242 villages will have to divide a total US$23.2M the government has allocated to indigenous communities from this year’s Carbon Credit Sales.
Those monies were divided up on Tuesday based on the population of each village, a formula that the NTC (National Toshaos council) had agreed on last year.
Villages with a population of over 1000 received GYD$35M each, other villages with a population between 500 and a thousand received GYD$ 24M while those with smaller population only got GYD$15M.
This amount might still not be enough for some villages to accomplish what they need. Nevertheless, the VP, Jagdeo, has been calling on Guyanese to live within their means although the county is among the largest and most lucrative oil producing nations in the world. Guyana was shortchanged with its Stabroek block oil deal signed in 2015. The contract favours ExxonMobil and its partners more than the people of Guyana and Jagdeo himself has acknowledged this multiple times.
However, he is unwilling to take a stand to renegotiate the deal which will definitely increase the revenues that the citizens of Guyana are receiving now and even in the future.
The VP in 2021, during a Barker Institute Conversation while attending the 2021 Offshore Technology Conference (OTC) in Houston Texas, USA had said, “We don’t see ourselves wealthy as yet, oil revenue, the magnitude that would see major flow to Guyana is not coming for the next few years”. Back then Guyana was only receiving US$300M to US$400M a year, so the VP continued: “US$300M/US$400M a year now is not a lot of money and many people think, oh the wealth will come tomorrow or, it’s here today and suddenly we have to start splurging.” Jagdeo as such was adamant, “We have to live within our means for quite a while into the future”. He had even doubled down on his position by adding, “People believe we have a lot of money to give,” and drew reference to publicly voiced opinions, initially by professor, Clive Thomas, who has called for a US$5,000 cash transfer to each Guyanese families annually, a proposal which Jagdeo rubbished.
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