What the Toshaos say about…The challenges they face

As Toshaos from across the country gathered at the Liliendaal Conference Centre for the annual Toshaos Council Meeting last week, we asked the leaders what were some of the difficulties their communities face and what they hope to come out of the meeting.

Rance Allicock, Rockstone Region Ten
Right now the problem that we face there is a communal land dispute with Afro-Guyanese that are resident there and they are not really resident and it is not really feasible at this moment. We move from CDC to village Council and after moving from that the other party, the Afro-Guyanese, just a few of them decided that they wanted to remain in the CDC and we are not wanting to stay one place we want to move to higher ground.

Because we are doing an application for communal land they were against us and they were saying if we hold communal we don’t sell it will remain as a CDC they will take us to court.

We have other issues getting on with our development especially with the tourism. We don’t have machines to upgrade the road for our fish festival. This morning we got news from our communities that they went in there and did some work.

Ken Faria, Sandcreek Region Nine
I would term it as major issues since the new council that I am the chairman of came in we did a lot of readjustment. In general the infrastructure of the community has been upgraded particularly in the education sector. My village is now having a brand new secondary school near to completion it should be up and going some time in May just the dormitory has to be done.
And that community wouldn’t be just benefiting from there it would be other communities. There are ten communities that make up the sub district and they will benefit from the secondary school as well. We have small problems at home but no major problem.

What I hope to see come out from this council meeting we have from all indications is that we were asked to make our community development plan (CDP) which will come together with the LCDS programme and we are quite comfortable with it.

Dhaness Larson, Isseneru Region Seven
The problem Isseneru faces is really with the mining issues. It’s really a court matter. It is a land issue with one miner. It looks to us like the land got two owners. It is an appeal case. Well so far things are good except for the one problem we having.

Well I hope to see changes especially with land demarcation from this meeting. It sounds feasible in a kind of way.

Devroy Thomas, Arau Region Seven
The main issue that we face in Arau is land, land issue. Demarcation we are not ready for that but in April month we received a letter from Minister of Amerindian Affairs saying that they have noted that Arau village haven’t completed they application demarcation. We never did it. We want to but we have to understand what it is really, the positive and negative impact of demarcation we have to know about that.

But no one is going to tell us because the government is talking about we first must be consulted before whatever development takes place. This LCDS, we have never been involved in consultation, never; at no time. So we don’t know what it is.

Well I would love to see that the government start doing its work more properly because they have signed the memorandum of understanding in which they say that they will do consultation and which never happened. So we want to tell the government they need to do more work before implementing.

Edmond Santiago, Tobago Region One
The problem in our village is that we don’t have a proper school. We have a small building that we using as a primary school but it wasn’t built by the government it built by Food for the Poor but we just hand it over to be a school by the time.

They promise to build one. I think they promise to build one for us next year but I don’t know how fast this can happen because we need the building to be done fast because the one that we using now is not in good condition. We are having 40 children going to the school and some going to other villages something like three to four miles away walking and no transportation.

The school children are trying their best in school and I see that there is good progress in the children already learning, although we have a small school we doing well.

At this year meeting I’d like that we do some poultry rearing. We having a school feeding programme which is about completed right now and we will need things like greens, vegetables to buy.

Lawrence Williams, Arukamia Region One
The challenge our village faces is mostly transportation to market goods. Then we need routes used in the river to be cleared. We need a road from our village to catch the main road which is five miles from us to be upgraded.
The main concern we have is farming we need more drainage and irrigation to protect our crops and get good yields. We came here to see if we can seek assistance to the problems facing us.

Maurice Henry, Kamwatta Mabaruma Sub Region, Region One
The main challenge my village is facing is road development. I’ve asked the regional authority to come and upgrade the road since last August. It never happened. This year during the course of the hot weather the Minister of Water came to my village and I told him my story and he promised that it will be done this year.

The road needs to be upgraded. Children have to walk five miles each day to go to school. If the road is done transportation by bus can be done and the road can be used to take the children to school.

At this meeting, I hope that we will be abreast of more information of the LCDS. I hope after meeting the government I get more resources because our Amerindian brothers are saying they (the government) are limiting us. We are afraid we won’t have more freedom. If we can learn more we can better understand.

Lester Fleming, Muritaro Region 10, 25 miles from Linden
These meetings bring people together and try to understand our problems and how we can develop. We get full support from central government and I am looking forward to more cooperation and unity among villages throughout Guyana.

In my community stability of jobs to make a livelihood is needed. And even though we identify projects we need to develop skills to carry them out. Skills training is needed. A positive is there is a student from the village in Cuba studying Industrial Engineering and the Village Council has brought in Information Technology. During a six weeks programme in August, 76% of persons graduated.

Linchinu Bennette, Taruka Village Region Eight
The problem I facing is the community need cloth for the sewing group. There is a shortage of materials like cloth and zips. We in a bad condition we don’t have a lot of cassava which was destroyed by the heavy rains earlier this year.

At this meeting I am expecting a village office to be developed and a multipurpose centre in my community. These are the things I plan to bring up.

Joseph Stanislaus, Monkey Mountain, Region Eight
Our school needs some maintenance on it. The walls for the library falling apart and it crack up and things like that. The school needs a kitchen also. The roof also needs repair. According to what I understand we still got to go back to Monkey Mountain and discuss some of the matters we proposing from the village. That is all my concern.

Neville Augustine, Crash water Region Nine
The wind mill is working but it is not pumping water to the tank. The water is not filling up the tank. The road is another. It want grade up. We use two ways of travelling the boat and the van. The meeting was good. This is the second time I coming. Progress from last year was good so this year is promising.


Doreen Jacobis, Tapakuma/St Denny’s Mission, Region Two

We don’t have problems. Good things happening. In July I received 73 solar panels. Every single home in Tapakuma has a solar panel including my health centre, the village office, the pavilion, the cassava mill and the school.

Apart from that we had GWI and they were given a solar power system which gives the entire village water. We have 13 stand pipes running water and out of the villages only 6 families will not benefit because they live like six to eight miles away and it will be difficult even if I am willing to run the pipes.

So at this conference I hope to get some tuff tanks to give these families so that they will be able to get rain water. Contractors were at the school building a sanitary block for the children and this is funded by the fast track initiative. These are developments and next week hopefully we will get the access bridge, the main bridge repaired. Coming out of this meeting I hope to get even more development because we were told by the president that US$8M (from the Norway funds) will be going to Amerindian communities and so we have a community development plan which I hope part of that money may be able to help me accomplish some of my projects.

Projects like my peanut farm. We are doing cassava right now but we want to add something more. Apart from that we want to go into aqua farm culture because you know as Amerindian we love our fish and we can have for ourselves as well as to sell. All in all I think we are getting there from where we were to where we want to go.

Yvonne Pearson, Mainstay Region Two
We are a farming community more or less our two main economic activities are farming and a very small amount of logging. We are organic farmers, we are the only organic certified farmers in Guyana and that is something we are proud of. We mainly produce pineapple but at this point in time what is happening is because of climate change we are feeling the effects of climate change where our crop is not as bountiful as it use to be.

We are like a regular community. We have good water facilities, reasonable housing, we have schools, health centres. Biggest challenge we face right now: climate change with regards to our production of pineapple that would hinder our economic situation. We get most of our monies from our farms.

As head of the national toshaos council I would want the year 2010 closing off with us having some concrete decision also I would like to see the national toshaos reach out to various villages in all the ten administrative regions and to hold awareness sessions with our people so that they can have a better understanding of LCDS and REDD.

We would like to be more active in getting information down to the people. We are awaiting a partnership from the World Bank to carry out that activity.


Lorna Williams, Kabakaburi Region Two

In my community since I’m toshao I have seen a lot of development because of hard work. I can safely say we have a cargo village service boat and a community passenger boat also and I can safely say we have a village shop.

My challenge is private boat owners to the passenger service. They are faster than us. We work on special hire now. Coming out of this meeting it will be much more fruitful now because I can safely say I know my community is embarking on an aquaculture project. My community will see benefits coming from this. I am happy my land issues have now been resolved.