‘Time you reinvent yourselves’
President David Granger addresses the 12th Annual NTC Conference on Monday
President David Granger addresses the 12th Annual NTC Conference on Monday

– become more proactive, President urges NTC

THE annual National Toshaos Council (NTC) Conference should aim to establish itself as a vehicle for ensuring improved public services to the indigenous peoples,President David Granger said on Monday at the opening ceremony of the 12th annual NTC Conference at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre at Liliendaal, Greater Georgetown.
“It is about planning and implementation; it must erect institutions to ensure accessible, affordable and appropriate public services in all indigenous communities. It is about the future,” the President told village leaders.

He said the NTC should aim at improving people’s quality of life by assisting their communities to develop village improvement plans which promote access to public services. President Granger, who was accompanied by First Lady Sandra Granger, Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo, his wife Seeta Nagamootoo and several government officials, reminded the gathering of Toshaos from across the country that the NTC is neither decorative nor apolitical.

“It is not an ornamental body, nor a political party,” he declared. “It is a vital executive organ with clearly defined objectives for ensuring the progress of indigenous communities.
“The NTC must establish appropriate administration, operation and organisation structures to foster cooperation between the national and regional governments, and village councils and district councils, and to ensure implementation of its decisions.”
The President reminded his audience that the establishment of a National Indigenous Peoples’ Authority (NIPA) is aimed at ensuring the implementation of decisions emerging from the annual Toshaos conferences. NIPA was proposed at the 10th NTC Conference back in August 2016.

The NIPA, he said, was envisaged as an executive agency that was empowered with the financial, technical and managerial expertise to ensure the implementation of the Council’s decisions. It was intended to design plans to solve the development problems confronting indigenous communities, including obstacles to the delivery of quality public services, he said.

And, with reference to his past statement that there is need “to battle against the four horsemen of the Guyanese Apocalypse: Poverty, ignorance, disease and crime,” President Granger said: “I recognised that no single village could fight this battle alone, or without a battle plan. I called also for the establishment of village improvement plans (VIPs).
“These calls recognise that public services must be generated at the local level.”
Having said that, he made it clear that the NTC should have as its objective the improvment of people’s quality of life by assisting their communities to develop village improvement plans which promote access to public services.

He reminded those present that the majority of the indigenous population still lives in the hinterland, which occupies about 75 per cent of the country’s land space, and that the smallness in size and wide dispersal of villages present challenges to the delivery of public services. Low population density, for example, he said, increases the cost of delivering public services.

“Village improvement plans, therefore, must pay attention to every aspect of community life in order to ensure that public services are easily and equitably delivered,” President Granger stated, while noting that this can only materialise through the process of engaging, applying and practising ideas.

LEARNT A LOT
Since taking office in May 2015, the President said, he has visited some 36 indigenous communities and has learned a lot from meeting people and observing their communities. “This experience has guided the provision of improved public services as a means of narrowing the inequality between the hinterland the coastland.”

Those visits, he said, demonstrated the need for multi-agency collaboration and coordination to achieve the best possible results, as he referenced 12-year-old Anasie Fredericks of Tapakuma Lake Primary School, who wrote the National Grade Six Assessment examination this year and secured a place at the Bishops’ High School.
Her family’s contemplation of her attending the Anna Regina Multilateral School, he said, would in fact see her utilising the services of the new bus service provided to the Tapakuma village neighbourhood to transport children to schools on the Essequibo Coast.
The bus at reference, he said, is one of 27 supplied under the 3Bs initiative, providing free public transportation to schoolchildren. “It is quietly facilitating educational opportunities for Indigenous Peoples; a small example of the positive impact of public services on the lives of citizens,” President Granger said.

Additionally, the establishment of the Regional Public Broadcasting Service reaching Aishalton, Bartica, Lethem, Mabaruma, Mahdia and Orealla, he said, is intended to provide information and to promote national integration.

“Public services are integral also to ‘frontier village’ security along the nearly 800 km frontier with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela,” the president said, adding that there are several “interesting models” available for the provision of public services in rural and hinterland communities.

“They could be brought together in central spaces so that residents can have easy access to them,” he said. “This suggests that villages should be more carefully planned to facilitate the delivery of services rather than being allowed to spring up in a haphazard manner.”
As such, the development of VIPs should create a blueprint for improving the delivery of public services in indigenous communities. The VIPs must address, as a priority, four major categories of public services, the first, being the improvement of access, attendance and achievement in public education.

Village councils, he said, should ensure that every child attends and graduates from school in order to benefit from the opportunities which education unlocks.
Secondly, employment should not be limited to the everyday village life, as opportunities should be opened for your people to be educated as accountants, attorneys, businesspersons, doctors, engineers and managers among other professional occupations.
“Every child should be given the opportunity to be best that she or he could be,” he stressed, while noting that job-creation, especially through programmes which foster self-employment and entrepreneurship, should be emphasized.
Agro-processing, eco-tourism and value-added manufacturing, he opined, can be developed to generate incomes to boost the village economies.

In the third instance, President Granger said, the quality of human life is linked to the quality of the environment. As such, environmental resilience against the threats of droughts, floods and land degradation, reckless disposal of solid waste, pollution of waterways and the cold-blooded exploitation of wildlife must be built.

Improved health services must be provided to residents of each village or community. Moreover, he declared that every community needs reliable and renewable energy. This, the President said, will help to establish reservoirs and wells and power agro-processing enterprises, households, health centres, schools and community facilities.
“Plans for the delivery of public services – particularly those related to education, economic services, energy, water, human health and the environment – will certainly yield improvements in villagers’ quality of life,” he said.

In this vein, he told the country’s Toshaos that all plans must aim at ensuring more sustainable and secure livelihoods, boosting human wellbeing, creating increased opportunities and reducing the inequalities between the coastland and hinterland communities.

VILLAGE ECONOMIES

Toshaos at the 12th Annual NTC Conference being held this week at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre at Liliendaal, Georgetown (Photos by Adrian Narine)

Meanwhile, President Granger noted that nearly 75 per cent of Guyanese of African, Amerindian and East Indian descent still live in non-urban or village communities. He reminded that the country’s economy is still heavily reliant on the production of commodities from the said villages.

As such, the head-of-state made it clear that Central Government cannot be unconcerned about the viability of village economies and the vitality of village life.
“Most Guyanese have their roots in villages, and share a common vision of bucolic rural life,” he said, adding:

“Time does not stand still, however, and villages must continuously modernise their amenities and utilities in order to enhance the quality of life of their residents. Long-term, not year-to-year, plans must be made and their implementation must be continuous, not episodic, to achieve the objective of modernity.”

President Granger said the hosting of NTC conferences provide an opportunity for such plans to be executed, as it allows for Indigenous leaders to review the progress made in the development of villages, renew their commitment to improve the lives and livelihoods of the people, and to repair or remodel their village plans for future years.
He said, too, that the villagers’ quality of life is a measure of progress made by the leaders, and an indicator of the steps needed to achieve the objectives of village improvement.
“Villagers’ quality of life is dependent on the quality of public services provided to them; villages, if they are to be viable, should ensure that these services are accessible, affordable and appropriate,” said the President.

“Public services should be enjoyed by all regardless of place of residence. They should be delivered at all three levels of government – national, regional and neighbourhood or village,” he added, while reminding leaders that The Amerindian Act 2006 empowers Village Councils headed by Toshaos and the National Toshaos’ Council, to promote access to and the delivery of public services.

The President pointed to Sections 13 and 14 of the Act, which charge village councils with responsibility for the planning and development of indigenous villages and for making rules to govern the supply and use of water, the construction and maintenance of roads, bridges, ditches, fences and for the provision of sanitation and order.

Section 41 of the said legislation entrusts the National Toshaos’ Council with preparing strategies and plans for reducing poverty, improving access to health and education and for the “protection, conservation and sustainable management of village lands and natural resources.” This year’s NTC conference is themed, “Preserving our past, protecting our future.”

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