Sukhai announces…..
AMERINDIAN communities would benefit from a massive $88M programme geared towards developing economic activities and improving the livelihood in the hinterland.

It is part of the new focus by the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs, the Minister, Mrs. Pauline Sukhai told a press conference Tuesday at her Quamina Street, Georgetown office.

She said: “We are bringing a new focus to the work of the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs and that new focus has unfolded I think in a very significant way.”

Alluding to the Low Carbon Development Strategy unveiled by President Bharrat Jagdeo the day before, she said: “You would have heard that he made mention of putting finances into the hinterland. I think he did call a figure of around $60M.”

But Sukhai said there would be much more investment in the hinterland for the remainder of 2009 and that money will be provided almost immediately.

“That would go towards the new focus which we have been developing over the last couple of months and that focus is to work and support and encourage the Amerindian leaders and the communities to begin to seriously address community development.

“Also to seriously start engaging their communities to begin to develop economic activities that would provide opportunities for their residents,” she explained.

Sukhai said the Ministry is hoping to get this initiative underway at the National Toshaos Council (NTC) conference in July.

“However, the groundwork has already been done and the foundation has been set and we have been able to place three specialists in Region One (Barima/Waini) sub-region Mabaruma, where this programme will kick off,” she revealed.

Sukhai said the specialists are already working in the field with 15 communities and another four are expected to join them.

She said that team comprises an aquaculturist, an agriculturalist, a pest control specialist, a food technologist, marketing and finance specialists, a project management and networking specialist and a business development specialist.

RELIEF
“It would bring a lot of relief and a lot of support to what is happening in the Amerindian communities,” Sukhai noted.

She said the experts will be looking directly at supporting communities in developing enterprises that are unique to the sub-region that has a good comparative advantage in that region and be supportive of their development throughout the entire value chain.

Sukhai said that the programme is expected to last two years, during which the specialists would be working with the communities to ensure that whatever venture is going to be established will be sustainable.

The minister emphasised that young people in the targeted communities would be attached to the specialists to enable the former to develop their skills.

She said that objective is in accord with the low carbon development strategy which President Bharrat Jagdeo so forcibly presented Monday.

“It also sits very neatly into his document and, as the theme says, transforming Guyana’s economy while combating climate change, because we expect that those enterprises and those ventures that will take place in Region One will be based on a low carbon kind of model,” Sukhai observed.

She pointed out that it is a national programme for which the funding has been realised.

Of the $88M, $60M will be released almost immediately and, notwithstanding that, every year the communities in the hinterland receive $150M under the Presidential Grant Fund, that is also provided to the communities to start small economic enterprises, particularly productive ones, Sukhai said.

She said it is a very significant national programme which is just the first step in providing one sub-region and 15 communities with resources to move ahead in the transformation of their economies.