Dear Editor,
I read statements by His Excellency President Irfaan Ali on the issue of race in Guyana. The President stated, ‘all Guyanese must come together to address the scourge of racism in Guyana’. A particularly important point the President made, is as follows, “Sometimes, we look to the Government alone for the solution. To address the issue of race requires changes at the individual level’. The President further stated, ‘My appeal to all Guyanese is – judge us by our work, judge us by our policies.’ I wish to state that, as citizens, we are judging the government based on its work and its policies.
Let me pause here to express gratitude to Stabroek News, Kaieteur News, and the Village Voice, for giving expression to the hurts, feelings, emotions, and views from the black community in Guyana or Afro-Guyanese community. The President would find it interesting to know that as a result of the government’s approach to governance, particularly towards Afro-Guyanese, over the past six months, it has brought the black community together in ways that I have not seen before. Many Afro-Guyanese felt that all they had was each other, so they bonded together, looked out for each other, and fought for each other. Personally, I have never seen the black community in Guyana so mobilized and alert, as they have been over the past months. This was partly because it believed that the government’s agenda was three-fold – to criminalize, fire and disgrace Afro-Guyanese and their leaders. The President further stated, “There is only one option on the table, and that is, moving all of us together, unified as one people…To ensure that Guyanese are comfortable, that the Government is operating and working in a manner in a way in which they can all realise their aspirations, regardless of who you voted for, regardless how you look’. Is this so Mr. President?
Because the government’s reason for firing many public servants was because they were political appointees, so will the government rehire them, since the government now seem to have a change of heart, and it does not matter who people voted for? The article further stated, ‘The President also called out public individuals, who he said use race “opportunistically, to solidify their own positions.” ‘His Excellency further stated, “Why such a selfish agenda? What is the motive behind that agenda?”’ The race and inequality issue will not go away because the President says that is must end.
First, he has to accept that there is a serious race and inequality problem in Guyana, and put measures in place to change that. I have never stated this in public before, but I will now. When I worked at GuySuCo and the APNU+AFC government was laying off about 5,000 or 6,000 employees, as managers, we developed a programme, called the ‘Sustainable and Resilient Communities Programme’ (S&RCP) as a shock-counteraction and shock-absorption measure. Do we really believe as a society, that the APNU+AFC could have laid off 5,000-6,000 sugar workers, one of the PPP/C‘s main support base, and life just went on almost as per normal? That did not just happen.
So intense was the programme to bring some degree of hope, and the work that was required to go into it, that I fell into a coma. After I recovered, I became even closer with my GuySuCo family. Sometime in 2018, some individuals in the APNU+AFC government decided that they were going to terminate my services. I wrote to then President Granger and former Minister of Agriculture, Noel Holder and they intervened, and I survived to fight with and for the sugar workers another day. I now fight for just treatment for the public servants, the staff at GECOM and others. President Ali let us drop the titles now, as one human being to the next, as a black person that hurts.
The President said that ‘if we don’t change our mindset, if we don’t love and respect each other as Guyanese, if we don’t understand what the concept is of being Guyanese, it is a set of guiding principles that cement us as a people.” For me, I was concerned for the wider Afro-Guyanese community, and the government proved that my concerns were valid. I wrote the President a letter stating that it was unconstitutional to fire public servants because of political affiliations, further, the Minister of Parliamentary Affairs and Governance stated that they had sent letters to public servants and if those persons did not resign, the government would fire them. The minister also declared that the APNU+AFC leaders did not have the integrity to lecture the government, etc., I, then realized that people would need voices with integrity and credibility to represent them.
Yours faithfully,
Audreyanna Thomas
