Dear Editor,
As taxpayers, ours is a principal duty to hold government accountable and ensure our tax dollars are being used in our interests and we all equally benefit from the fruits of this nation. The PPP in its May Day message to the workers deceptively claims it is the “foremost defender of the working class,” when the facts reveal the Jagdeo-Ramotar stewardship has been the most ruthless and un-democratic to workers.
Under this administration workers’ rights are daily eroded in clear violations of universal declarations and conventions, and the Guyana Constitution. Since 1999 this government refuses to negotiate public servants’ income and working conditions with the GPSU, threatened GAWU with de-recognition, and since May 2009 the GB&GWU has been locked in battle with the Ministry of Labour to have BCGI obey the Labour laws. Workers are also seeing government putting systems in place to ensure some unions do not get bargaining rights even when they have satisfied the conditions.
The right to work is still not guaranteed to all. Income remains measly with the real wage on the decline, as devaluation, inflation, VAT, PAYE and high prices force many workers into dependency/men dicancy. Everywhere poverty stares us in the face as this administration sets about installing a plantation style economy on the backs of the people. Efforts at seeking improved working conditions are being trampled as the government breaks up pension plans, create a corps of contractual workers and refuses to pass regulations to ensure proper occupational safety and health measures at the workplace.
Inspite of these glaring injustices, the PPP says that since October 1992 it has been taking necessary and practical measures in the best interest of workers which include wage increases; affordable housing; controlling the cost of living; improvements in social service, health care and medical service; and zero tolerance to violent crimes, drug trafficking and domestic abuse.
In November 1992 the government moved against bauxite by reducing production, giving away the international market, firing hundreds of workers, and ruined their pension and thrift plans; fired leading public servants and politicized their positions, engineered the demise of the Co-op and Agricultural banks then gave them away under the guise of a sale, to name a few. In the quest for political control of every sector of the economy, albeit the evident incompetence, sugar has not escaped. An industry that enjoyed international preferential treatment, with self-financing potential has been hijacked and mismanaged by political lackeys and is now reliant on its sustenance from the taxpayers while board members, including Donald Ramotar, receive super fees and workers face an uncertain future.
Home ownership remains a crisis and talk of house-lots distribution when acquiring a loan and having the ability to pay an average mortgage remains a challenge for the ordinary worker, makes a mockery of the claim. In 2000 the Trades Union Congress (TUC) submitted a proposal to the government for lands on the Linden-Soesdyke Highway to build a Self-sustaining Housing Development Project, which President Jagdeo frustrated and jettisoned. The thrust behind this project was to generate employment and make use of the home-owners’ labour in building their homes as a contributory factor in determining the cost for their property. This approach would have made it easier to achieve the dream of home ownership on a non-prohibitive plan but the government refuses to give approval and it can only be because it does not want to empower workers.
Constitutionally the state is tasked with the responsibility to provide health care for the citizens. Boasting of a health care system that allows two to three patients to lie on one hospital bed; many having to purchase medication from private pharmacies; life expectancy not changed; absence of preferential treatment for the vulnerable groups like the elderly, poor, youth, and retired; and many still having to travel abroad for basic services are actually exposures of the health care inadequacies we face.
There can be no claim to curbing domestic abuse when the reputed wife of the Chief Public Servant still awaits justice for the abuses she says she suffered at his hands.
Today abusers not only rely on the Mighty Sparrow’s ‘black up deh eyes/bruise up deh/ and they’ll love you eternally’ as justification to violation but also hide behind President Jagdeo’s actions. If the PPP is serious about tackling domestic abuse, protecting and empowering women, then the Chief Public Servant must come out and set the example for others to follow.
Crime has escalated and with the support of officialdom. Some instances are the plundering of the Treasury and none being brought to justice, the flaunted association with convicted drug lord Roger Khan and late alleged hit-man Axel Williams; massacres at Lindo Creek, Bartica, Lusignan, Agricola and no one brought to justice; the refusal to investigate the 2002-2004 crime spree; refusal to implement the Disciplined Forces Commission recommendations; repeated reports from the Commissioner of Police that crime is on the increase; and refusal of assistance from the international community in crime fighting and drug enforcement.
The Party said it takes the greatest pride in its stewardship of democracy and human rights, honouring and safeguarding the Constitution, and the positions of the working class have not regressed but instead have showed vast improvements and a strong forward momentum, and without any fear of reasonable contradiction the future of the working class is in good hands, where the PPP-Civic Government is concerned. There is no absolutely no accuracy in any of these claims.
Politics is about people and people’s development and in the absence of such the nation suffers. The PPP has failed to put people at the centre of any programme it implements, but has instead used our tax dollars to reward a few.
Democracy is not only confined to elections. It also includes: 1) active participation of the people, as citizens, in politics and civic life; 2) protection of the human rights of all citizens; and 3) a rule of law, in which the laws and procedures apply equally to all citizens. The fact that none of these is functioning to the benefit of all, puts a lie to any claim of democracy and adherence to the Constitution.
Freedom isn’t free. It requires struggles and sacrifices- a price worth paying as seen in the fights to end slavery and indentureship; win civil rights, inclusive governance, liberation, birthing of nationhood, maintaining security and development.
This land belongs to all of us and we must resolve to fight together to build it. Our unity/oneness as Guyanese must therefore be built around a common struggle for freedom that will result in social and economic justice for all. Adhering to these principles will see the realization of a secured environment where we can all can live out our dreams fearlessly, and benefit from the fruits of this land, irrespective of our diversity. We must therefore resist any effort to use our God-given uniqueness as a wedge to lie to us or deny us what is rightly ours, and which will succeed in keeping us divided and under-developed as the violators live off the sweat of our labour.
Yours faithfully,
Lincoln Lewis
