In the wake of the ongoing controversy governing the staging of the Linden Town Week 2007 Stabroek Business has learnt that the Interim Management Com-mittee of the Linden Mayor and Town Council will assume overall management responsibility for the running of the Town Week programme but that various private organizations will be invited to submit bids to finance and run individual events comprising the programme.
The disclosure would appear to bring to an end ongoing speculation over the fate of the mining town’s most important celebratory event which is widely regarded as a substantial potential money-earner for both large and small businesses in the community.
Late last year a controversy erupted between the Linden IMC and the Kashif and Shanghai Organization, one of two organizations that staged the 2006 event. The controversy surrounded a demand by the IMC that last year’s organizers pay a franchise fee of $2m – double what was paid for the staging of the 2006 event – for the right to host the April 2007 event. The Kashif and Shanghai Organization had told Stabroek Business that itself and the United States-based Linden Fund, USA, (LFU) the joint organizers of the 2006 event would pull out of this year’s event since they considered the doubling of the franchise fee “an imposition.”
Late last week Stabroek Business spoke with Dr. Vincent Adams, the Tennessee-based Lindener and Chairman of the LFU who along with the organization’s Secretary Linda Felix had travelled to Guyana earlier in the week to seek to broker a solution to the impasse. Dr. Adams told Stabroek Business that he had met with the IMC and that it had been agreed that last year’s organizers would not be responsible for the hosting of the event this year. The LFU Chairman told Stabroek Business, however, that his organization was ‘fully committed to the 2007 Town Week” and that it had already begun making arrangements for hundreds of United States-based Lindeners to return home for the event. Dr. Adams was due to meet with Kashif and Shanghai Director Kashif Mohammed before his return to the United States.
Dr. Adams told Stabroek Business that the decision by himself and the LFU Secretary to come to Guyana to help break the logjam over the staging of the 2006 event was intended to send a signal to Lindeners and to Guyana as a whole that his organization was committed to the development of the community. The LFU Chairman and University of Guyana graduate who holds a Phd. in Engineering from the University of Tennessee told Stabroek Business that based on the number of United States-based Lindeners expected to return to Guyana in April the estimated US$1m spent by returning Lindeners during last year’s Town Week event could be matched if not exceeded this year.
LFU Secretary Felix told Stabroek Business that the organization’s programme to provide support to the mining community centred around partnering with local organizations to initiate and sustain development programmes for the community and to help fund educational opportunities for promising Linden scholars. Adams, who holds a management position in the nuclear technology industry in Tennessee told Stabroek Business that a number of international donor organizations including the United Nations, the World Bank and USAID are evincing an increasing interest in the role diasporas resident in developed countries can play in the development of their countries of origin. “What is of particular interest to these international organizations is the role that diaspora organisations play in channelling funds and other contributions directly to communities in their home countries without the costs and interventions that are involved in the formal channels of multilateral assistance to developing countries. It is quite obvious that they see much merit in the approach used by diaspora organisations.”
Three years ago Dr. Adams visited Guyana on a related mission funded by the USAID and according to the LFU Chairman the aid agency is currently seeking to partner US-based disapora organisations in developing aid initiatives that include providing “matching funds” for development projects in home countries.
The LFU has prepared a draft strategic plan for the mining town which Adams says it intends to discuss with stakeholders in the community. He disclosed that the plan addresses a range of development-related issues including enhancing the skills base of the community, funding development projects and attracting foreign investment into Linden. According to Adams the plan also seeks to take account of the impending completion of the Lethem to Linden road link since this development will open significant business opportunities for the community.
The LFU is a United States-registered charity with chapters in New York/New Jersey, Washington and Atlanta. The organization also has sister organizations in Canada, the United Kingdom and Guyana. Adams told Stabroek Business that the real aim of the LFU was to develop sustainable, long-term projects aimed at improving the lives of the people of Linden. As part of its job-creation programme for the mining town the LFU is currently seeking to acquire land for the establishment of a furniture and wood products factory.
