President Jagdeo said the shift will be in keeping with the re-engineering of the army and the theme of its annual officers’ two-day conference, ‘Re-engineering to Enhance National Defence and security’. This shift has been spoken of repeatedly by PPP/C Presidents since 1992.
Addressing soldiers and invitees at the opening of the conference yesterday, Jagdeo said that traditionally the GDF has been structured to maintain peace at the borders and the territorial integrity of the country. But he noted that the country does not anticipate going to war with any of its neighbours and it has not been at war for most of its history.
“But you have this huge pool of talented people in the military and we can’t have them wait on a war with our neighbours…,” the President said.
He said while there is still need to have the GDF adequately trained to ensure the integrity of the country’s borders, “the sole focus of the traditional concept of the military has to shift to one that is wider in its understanding and with a better use of the country’s resources.”
President Jagdeo said he was asked to outline his vision of Guyana for the next five to ten years, so the army could situate its work in that context. He told the officers that re-engineering has to focus on better efficiency and better use of the resources already in place.
He challenged the officers to situate their academic knowledge in the reality of the Guyana context and urged that they must have a clear understanding of what is needed before they can speak about re-engineering. He said the officers need to understand the future challenges that the country will face, which include internal security.
According to the President, the challenges that face the country need to be ranked — short term, medium term and long term — since in a country like Guyana there are never enough resources to meet all the needs.
Jagdeo said Guyana is doing better economically and is funding more of its expenditure from its revenue adding that at present debt servicing and payment of wages and salaries account for just about 40% of the country’s revenue.
And while the country’s revenue has grown, he stressed that it did not grow because taxes were increased. He mentioned the value-added tax, which has been criticised by many for being too high, as having replaced eight other taxes. He said the growth in revenue has come largely because of the expansion of the economy.
Jagdeo told the officers that last year the government ended the year with some US$600 million in foreign exchange reserves and with PetroCaribe resources it is expected to increase by another US$100 million.
“Three-quarters of a billion US dollars in our central bank; the highest ever in the history of our country and that is in a crisis here,” the President said.
Renewable energy
Turning his attention to other things needed to assist in the development of Guyana, Jagdeo mentioned his government’s commitment to supply the entire country with renewable energy by way of hydropower. He said stable, cheaper electricity would not only mean consumers would pay less but it would also set the stage for further industrialisation.
The Head of State said modern telecommunication was also needed to help in the development process and he pointed out that the world has used this in a transformative way and it is making a huge difference in terms productivity increases. As a stand-alone sector it creates tens of thousands of jobs, but for this to happen in Guyana there is need for change hence the reason the government has been in constant discussion and “sometimes in conflict” with the major telecoms provider, he said.
“Because we feel that the services have not been adequate to allow national development of a transformative kind to take place,” Jagdeo said.
He said his administration was very pleased now that a new fibre optic cable has come to Guyana, even though the government is also bringing a fibre optic cable from Brazil which will be dedicated to the government’s need to allow e-government in a much more effective and efficient fashion.
He said having cheap bandwidth would be transformative in the way the state provides services to citizens. Further, the President said, through this the joint services would hopefully have a more modern way of gathering intelligence and monitoring the security environment.
“We all agree that internal security and policing against crime have to be intelligence driven and this tool allows us to gather a wealth of intelligence data that could be transformed [and] analysed and generated into intelligence that would improve significantly the way you work,” the President said.
Jagdeo said his government is looking forward with “excitement” to the second fibre optic cable landing in Guyana later this year and while it would cost the state money it did not want “another monopoly”– a reference to the monopoly GT&T has on land lines — but rather wants “several fibre optic cables.”
According to Jagdeo, citizens should be given options and he added that once this is done then the cost people now pay for bandwidth could be reduced by as much as 85%. Importantly, he said, when the telecommunication sector is improved then there would be more investment.
A stable Guyana
And President Jagdeo said his administration feels that a stable Guyana can only be maintained if every Guyanese “feels a part of the development here and has a stake in the development.” He said while this cannot be done immediately there must be a clear pathway towards fulfilling that need.
Jagdeo said with the abundance of land in the country every Guyanese should have his/her own home and his government has progressively worked at this, mentioning the government’s recent purchase of some 2,000 acres of land from Guysuco at the cost of $4 billion to develop some 10,000 low-income house lots.
All citizens must have access to health care, he said, and mentioned several new institutions the government has built including the state-of-the-art Linden hospital which “will not work at maximum capacity now; that hospital has been built to last for 50 years.”
The Commander-in-Chief also mentioned universal access to electricity and water.
He said the security that comes with improving living standards “contributes significantly to social cohesion and less disruption in society because people feel that progressively their needs are met.
“If you have large groups of people who are disadvantaged totally then there is a threat to national security.”
He added that the government has “even-handedly” distributed resources around the country and there can be no allegation of it favouring its strongholds.
