With a clean sweep for the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) First-Past-The-Post candidates in the Aranaputa/Upper Burro Neighbourhood Democratic Council (NDC), the winners are eager to get down to work in their constituencies.

The Aranaputa/Upper Burro area is nested in the North Rupununi District of Region Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo), home to mostly indigenous Guyanese.
Winning at the recently conducted Local Government Elections (LGE) in Constituency One, Two and Three respectively, were Leona Bremner-Da Silva; Adon Jacobus; and Virgil Harding.
Jacobus told the Guyana Chronicle that the campaign is over and service to the people comes first.

“Everybody is trying to pull themselves back together now, despite whatever political party we all supported. We’re trying to bring everybody together for us to all work together for the development of our community.”

Jacobus has been the chairman for the village for the last three years, he plans to focus on sport to keep young people away from drugs and alcohol.

“Sport is a form of bringing people together, it’s a form of uniting people. Presently our sports ground is fenced so one of my plans is to [secure] flood lights for the sports ground, so that at nights we can get the youths coming to the sports ground to be involved in different activities,” he said.

Apart from these, he wants to enhance water distribution in the region and see the construction of better farm-to-market roads.

Jacobus provided statistics which show that over 70 per cent of the eligible voters in the Aranaputa/Upper Burro area exercised their right to vote during the elections.
“We are proud of the turnout we had. Everybody showed their interest in voting in the first ever Local Government Elections (LGEs) the community would have been voting in,” he said.

Bremner-Da Silva was thankful for the support she received.

“I’m happy because it’s the first time in our community that we have experienced such an election, and it was not too strange to me because in my constituency, I was sure of my people. They were very supportive and even though I had other work to do too and could not reach out to them from time to time, they were the ones reaching out to me and giving me that support,” she said.
PLANS

Her plans for her constituency include building shelters for families; improving water distribution; conducting regular clean-up ventures; and constructing a play park for children and an opportunity centre for youths.
Bremner-Da Silva, 39, previously served as the village secretary at age 18. She now works as a teacher at the Aranaputa Nursery School, and decided to participate in the elections after some urging from fellow residents.

“The people in the community as a whole saw me as a person of standards, of substance and someone that helps at every beck and call. So, I felt that if they have that confidence in me, then I should say yes to their call.”

Also giving a ‘yes’ to the call was Virgil Harding of Constituency Three, who has been serving his community as the coordinator at Radio PAIWOMAK 97.1 FM, the first community radio in Guyana, for the last three decades years.

PAIWOMAK is an acronym made up from the names of the different mountain ranges found in the North Rupununi: Pakaraima; Iwokrama and Makarapan.

“I feel very much elated to be chosen to serve the people of my community, since serving people is one of the things I believe that I’ve been doing for some time. I’ve been doing community development work for about 30 years of my life,” he said.
His plans are to create day care centres where children can be nurtured, secure floodlights for the community sports ground, improve water distribution and facilitate land demarcation as well as the implementation of street lights.

A dream of his is to also see Aranaputa/Upper Burro become food secured as it often faces challenges in this regard.

“We’re always facing this dilemma at either the dry season or rainy season of running out of our staple food, cassava. I’ve been dreaming for the past 10 years of creating what I call a processing cassava shed,” Harding said.

He explained that the shed would hold the necessary materials needed for cassava production. Harding added that these tools would be made available to the villagers and would encourage cassava production and eventually greater food security in the region.