Dear Editor,
There are some well-to-do people who live in this country who are calling on this government to allow Syrian refugees to come here. It’s amazing how the altruism of these people works. They see it as imperative that we bring Syrians to this country, to save them.
Did any one of us hear this heart-rending plea when Haiti was devastated in 2010, where over 160,000 people died and double that were homeless? Of course not.
I would like to tell these altruistic bourgeois people to check out the whole of Bourda square, the pavement of the Post Office and Fogarty’s, and outside the Parliament Building any night after 8 pm; there they will see real refugees. But since they are home-grown refugees we call them ‘bums.’ I have never seen any of these bourgeois people feeding these people or giving them clothes as my family and I do, (and this is not a boast) and several other ordinary people do likewise every night.
Check any Saturday morning at the Calvary Lutheran Church on Alexander Street and you will see the line of Guyanese refugees waiting to get a cup of coffee. And all this hullabaloo about Syrians, I thought that charity began at home. Are these well-to-do people prepared to house the Syrian refugees at their mansions? Maybe at the Marriott or Pradoville One and Two?
Poor people in this country are presently dealing with an arrogant Housing Minister, who tells persons who were given land that they must finish construction of their houses at a certain time or the land will be taken back. Is the password for these Ministers arrogance? What are we manufacturing in this country? One thousand young people graduated from Tain, and another thousand from UG, and the talk is about jobs, where? Let me tell you where: in a bloated Police Force and the same for the GDF, the civil service, churches, Popeyes and Royal Castle. When Mr Burnham banned items from coming to this land our importation bill was $4M; he was forcing us to understand what real independence meant (do for yourself).
The present President said that we are now importing $15 billion. Yes, we have retrogressed to a manufacturers’ representative colony thanks to Mr Hoyte, who had no ideology and precious little knowledge of politics. He even made us return to wearing suits in this hundred degree temperature; what a colonialist. We are importing everything from lipstick to apples to walnuts, and that is fine. I am for every Guyanese regardless of colour, ethnicity, or religious persuasion to live a comfortable life, in this, the land of their birth. When that is accomplished, you can bring in whoever you want.
Yours faithfully,
Milton Bruce
