Dear Editor,
The description of Lindeners as ‘freeloaders’ or ‘lazy’ is a well-orchestrated political attack on a people whose only crime is that, having lived through hard times in the PNC era and then endured the last 20 years of the PPP’s discrimination and attempts to brainwash via NCN and buy their political loyalty with subsidized electricity, they still refused to vote PPP in 2011. Had Linden voted PPP last year, I doubt the government would have retaliated against APNU and the AFC for cutting the 2012 Budget, which included a $1B cut in subvention to GPL.
Although GPL does not even supply Linden with electricity, it was the cut to GPL’s subvention that gave the government an excuse get back at APNU by going after its voter base in Linden to pay more for electricity. (I did note that Parliament relented and finally passed the GPL subvention in full and we now have to wait and see if the government will announce a permanent suspension of increased tariffs for Lindeners.) Mind you, no other community has been targeted by government because of the Budget cuts, and we are also yet to learn in full what free or cheap government services other communities receive. Can the private media investigate this?
Moreover, the Prime Minister just announced that electricity tariffs may once again be going up nationwide, yet everyone is silent as if this is to be expected. Why are we such a docile people? Anyway, unlike other communities, whose electricity rates are set by the Public Utilities Commission (PUC) after public hearings, and whose findings are available for scrutiny, Lindeners don’t even seem to know how the government and Bosai, the Chinese owners of the bauxite company in Linden, arrived at their agreement on electricity rates. Whereas Lindeners may not know if they were overcharged for a product/service that was primarily generated for the bauxite company with the excess being spun off to the community, their protests have led to a technical team being assembled – which was what should have been done in the first place – to do a thorough analysis of how much it actually costs Bosai to supply electricity to the community before arriving at an appropriate electricity rate and implementation process.
However, to avoid the impression that Linden is again being treated differently with a technical team when there is the constitutionally established PUC, the technical team should at least publicly seek input from the PUC. It is actually ludicrous to talk about hooking Linden up to the national grid and the PUC is being shut out even at this preliminary stage or whether Bosai will also be supplying the national grid to help offset increased demand. As a Lindener by birth, I also disagree with the lies being peddled that Lindeners don’t want to pay their fair share of electricity rates or they seek to be treated differently from other Guyanese. All they ask is for a commonsense approach by the government and other stakeholders in helping them rebound from the sale of the bauxite operations in Linden that saw massive lay-offs and accompanying changes to traditional socioeconomic benefits like supplies of cheap potable water and electricity. Despite all the talk about LEAF and LEAP, it appears that those economic experiments failed to have the desired impact, and while blame is being dished out there, it was subsequently revealed that the PPP was in Linden with a political agenda – as its refusal to allow private radio and TV stations in the area attests – and not necessarily with the community’s best interest at heart. Over two decades now I have been reading and hearing how Linden can become an economic hub for those going to or coming from our hinterland, and this was definitely confirmed to me when I gauge the impact the Linden current road blockade is having on several other regions that depend on the town as a gateway.
But after two decades I can now logically conclude that the Linden problem has been politically inspired. Had Linden been voting PPP since 1992, the economic hub vision would likely have started coming on stream, but given the nature of the political animal called the PPP, it would have been under the direction of the PPP with its chosen people in oversight positions. Linden is not playing along! This is why we have to find ways to shut down the political machineries that run interference and hinder the community from fulfilling its potential. Linden, a once vibrant community, has the potential to rise again, if only it has the right visionary leadership at the national and local levels.
Editor, Lindeners are not freeloaders or lazy. The freeloaders are those who spent the last decade ripping off the state’s finances and assets. The lazy are those who collected fat six and seven-figure salaries from the state for doing absolutely nothing productive for the country. And while there may be some ‘extremists’ among protestors, there are ‘political extremists’ in the PPP who ignite the flames of division and then blame those who dare to identify the igniters. Lindeners, mainly former bauxite workers, are well aware that the sugar industry is in as much trouble as bauxite, haemorrhaging billions of dollars annually on top of wasting US$200M on the Skeldon Plant, yet the government keeps pumping billions into sugar, thus assuring sugar workers were employed and in a position to pay their bills. Whether it is a race or a political thing can be debated, but while some argue Lindeners are freeloaders, rest assured that others counter that sugar workers are highly favoured. Yet the issue is not even between sugar and bauxite workers, but with the manipulative and vindictive political leadership.
Yours faithfully,
Emile Mervin
