Indigenous village leaders attending a national caucus which was held in Georgetown late last month brought with them lists of issues which affect the residents of their areas and which they would like addressed. In some cases, the issues were universal: unemployment, a lack of teachers and proper educational facilities, the unavailability of water and electricity and so on. These are situations most, if not all Guyanese are experiencing or have experienced at one point or another.
Toshaos bring these matters to their national council because for most of them it is the only forum at which they are able to ventilate them in the hope that those in authority would fix them. The same applies for many other people in rural communities, who by virtue of where they live face social exclusion. As Guyanese they struggle daily with the same issues urban and suburban citizens face, but have fewer or in most instances no choices as regards addressing them.
For example, when interviewed for this newspaper’s ‘What the People Say’ column, Derek Williams, who is the Toshao at Kamarang in Region Seven, said that two of the pressing problems facing his village were water and overcrowding at the primary school. With regard to the water situation, he related that the 220-odd population would get their water from a creek which runs through Kamarang. The problem is that there are other villages higher up that also use the same creek so that by the time the water gets down to Kamarang it is muddy and possibly contaminated as well with the waste from the other villages.
The people who have to use the water complain to the Toshao, but it is not within his power to do anything about it. He can relay the problem to regional administrators, but must wait until central government decides to act or until the next funding cycle when it could possibly be budgeted for.
The same would apply in urban areas if the water source was contaminated. However, central government and its agencies tend to act more expeditiously when the problem is in the city, possibly because of the numbers of people who would be affected and the recourse residents can have to lobbying and the media of course. In any case, urban dwellers would also have the option of buying treated water – if they can afford it. But the people at Kamarang have no choice as that is their water supply source. Perhaps in the wet season they can store rain water to use, but that ought not to be the only alternative open to them. There ought to be a well or some other potable water source, and the creek should only be used for emergencies. Were the Ministry of Water to check the feasibility of such a project it may well find that providing a well for a population of 220 people does not make much financial sense. But how does one balance that against the probability of a water-borne disease affecting the entire population of Kamarang?
As regards the school issue, it is possible that when it was built it could accommodate the children in the area at the time. Obviously the school, which now has a population of 73, could not have become overcrowded overnight. Were things working the way they should, there would have been evidence of a growing population and the consequent need for expansion of the school or for another one to be built would have been clear. However, Toshao Williams had also indicated that accessing birth certificates was a problem for the villagers, an indication that the registering of births is probably out of kilter.
Overcrowding in schools and the difficulty accessing birth certificates are not unique to hinterland communities; citizens on the coast and in the city face these problems too. However, they can usually have them solved much faster than their peers in the interior.
Government cannot boast of having pushed development when there are thousands of citizens who remain socially excluded. The advantages available to the average Georgetown resident should also be readily available to the man from Kamwatta or the woman from Quarre. Social development involves tackling poverty, but does not end there; health, education and other issues also need to be addressed and in a way that encompasses everyone.
