Canal Polder farmers assured of...

er drainage. We’ll do the Hope-like canal at the ‘B’ line that the Vice President spoke about. Those structures will help you because we went to make these areas as productive as they once were. These areas were developed to produce for the country but over the years, the infrastructure has deteriorated. We have to rebuild and rehabilitate these structures. This is why

← we’ve increased budgetary allocations,” he added.

While responding to requests with raising the level of farmlands, Minister Mustapha said engineers from the NDIA will develop a

From page 17 programme to assist in this regard. “I am willing to do those works to help the farmers. The NDIA will do a programme to see how many farmers need this form of assistance. I have to say that we cannot do all the work at one time or give endless hours because we know many people have very large acreages but we will do those works to avoid flooding,” he explained. week pay to every worker to be furloughed – under one condition: that every such employee, from janitorial to managerial level, be engaged in a certain number of hours each week in learning or teaching something appropriate in computing. It was amusing, but indicative of the challenges we face, when one commentator mischievously remarked that while the Jagdeo regime was doing its best to attract and keep mainly Indo-Guyanese workers in the dead-end job of manually cutting cane, it was pointing the mainly Afro-Guyanese bauxite worker to the future – working with computers. This would not have fazed Mr. Jagdeo. True, he is an Indian-Guyanese, but he is, and has been, overarchingly a Guyanese.

Officers from NAREI will also meet with farmers to address crop issues after several farmers noted that their production levels were low following flooding in 2022.

Comrade Bharrat has been, and continues to be, a boon (blessing) to all Guyanese and Guyana, and even further afield, where he has been so recognised.

Mr. Lewis’s first two paragraphs, particularly his allusions to the role of Prime Minister Phillips in the current PPP/C Government, betray judgements, suspicions and questions which emerged in the 1950s and are still hanging around. Much of what these paragraphs say is what is to be read into them between the lines, subliminally. I read between-the-lines questionings about whether Black African Guyanese should be in the PPP and PPP/C, and if in the Leadership, should Black African Guyanese not be pursuing a very Black African Agenda? And would a recognizably true Black Agenda be evident without a combative posture to Indo-Guyanese? I would know what those two paragraphs are intended to say; I have walked them for twenty plus years. Mr. Lewis and his likes are still to accept the idea of themselves or anyone being overarchingly Guyanese.

Mr. Lewis’s grumblings of the Men on a Mission, MOM, programme reveal the orneriness in which he is stuck. He is loath to see anything good in the PPP/C. He cannot see that the threat to the cooperatives is intended to motivate African Guyanese members and leaders “to get up, stand up on their foot” and do a better job.

He and all of us have to get out of falling back on the paralysing mindset of being helpless victims, which sets us up for new exploitation.

Nonetheless, we ought to be understanding and sympathetic to Mr. Lewis, and help him and any others who are stuck with such views. A steadily closer union wouldn’t happen just so, we have to work at it – and we are not alone as a country. Today, in many countries with peoples of different ethnicities, much effort is put into having a diverse representative team, even though some of it might at first be thought of as contrived and awkward. Diversity is a common expectation today, but Cheddi and the PPP have been at this task of our nation building across race, colour, creed and class from the 1943 days of the PAC (Political Affairs Committee), and they have persisted. After many years of being cheated, Cheddi and the PPP returned in 1990 to putting together a diverse group for the expected 1990 elections, and I was presented as the Prime Ministerial Candidate. Many Afro-Guyanese asked: You believe that the PNC would allow Cheddi and you-all PPP to win the election? And if them people win, do you believe they will make you Prime Minister in truth? We now know the answers to both those question – both came to pass.

It is time for Mr. Lewis and many of us seniors to reconsider and put aside much of our views, insecurities, and fears and attitudes formed in our youthful days in the 1950s and 1960s. We have had some 60 years’ experience since, and much has happened and changed in the world and in Guyana. It is time to accept the PPP and PPP/C and Indo-Guyanese as Guyanese of no less standing and no less caring for Guyana. Cheddi Jagan the leader, and members and supporters of the PPP were put to the test repeatedly, and we paid our dues many times over during the many decades of our history from the 1950s to today.

Black African Guyanese and Indian Guyanese, and indeed Guyanese of all races, with time, with enough give-and-take all around, have been learning to work together in developing Guyana; and in the process, we are all becoming overarchingly Guyanese. We should not leave Mr. Lewis out; should not leave anyone out.

I invite Mr. Lewis, with his evident great abilities, to change his mindset, change his tune, come in from the cold, and join in the realisation of a converging Guyana, steadily growing more prosperous all around.

Yours truly, Samuel A. A. Hinds Ambassador to the United States of America And the Organization of American States