The naysayers and doomsayers, all of whom have political agendas, give credit to this Government for nothing that they do, but instead nitpick unendingly over every initiative the Administration drives to enable eventual upward mobility of the nation.

One Leon Suseran, a reported AFC candidate, writing in Kaieteur News, lambasted Government functionaries over the Cabinet outreach to Berbice last Tuesday, and one of his main contentions is the limited time that the President and his ministers spent in Berbice, stating that one day was not enough to meet everyone.

Granted, but even a month was not enough to meet everyone, so that was not the intention. However, Suseran is contending that President Jagdeo was supposed to go to Cumberland so that his (Suseran’s) father could question Guyana’s President; but that he failed to do so, imputing that the President was afraid to face the elder Suseran.

What a bloated sense of self-importance these two men have. They are convinced that meeting them should have been paramount above meeting other stakeholders, and because they were not singled out for presidential attention then the President’s outreach was politically driven, and not out of care for the people’s welfare.

Cabinet outreach is intended to reach a broad spectrum of communities in efforts to assess problems peculiar to each Region, and it is improbable that if one village has heavy iron content in its water that a minister of Government has to go to every village to listen to the same complaint magnified by as many villages as exist in the East Canje or any other area. So is Suseran and others of his ilk, who complain non-stop, saying that because the outreach could not target every village it should not happen at all?

I spent my entire childhood in that area. The entire populated area of the East Canje corridor is about the distance spanning one end of Georgetown to another, and the villages are approximately the length of two corners in the city, so his complaint about inadequacy of representation by only two ministerial teams visiting the East Canje has no merit. It takes mere minutes for persons to get from one village to another, and the major issues affecting one village would certainly not differ majorly from those affecting the other villages.

The President said that the East and West Canje roads will be fixed, among a number of other capital works earmarked this year for the Region, including $1.4 billion for an all-weather upgrade of the Black Bush Polder access road.

Suseran is complaining that the President only visited Corentyne villages, and ascribes this to political considerations. Suseran works for a few hours per day, five days per week, excluding holidays, and has months-long vacations during school-breaks. This does not include the lengthy periodic leave that teachers are allowed; so Suseran has much time on his hands to create mischief.

When asked by an interviewer at the Little Rock Television what he planned to do after he demits office Bharrat Jagdeo’s prompt response was: “Catch up on my sleep.”

After packing what for the likes of Suseran would be a full day’s work in the wee hours of the morning on Tuesday, President Jagdeo travelled by road to Crabwood Creek, where he held his first meeting. He then went to Black Bush Polder, then to Albion, then to Port Mourant, after which he had a meeting with officials of the Region. These meetings lasted for hours. From the Corentyne he went to New Amsterdam where he was scheduled to host a press conference, but instead did an interview so that all Berbicians who could not meet him in person could be informed, via this medium, about Government’s agenda for their welfare.

After the interview the President held Cabinet right there in Berbice so that his ministers could brief him on their activities during the day. They finished until the wee hours of Wednesday and then returned to the city, where he began another hectic round of activities.

This is the normal schedule of the President, who does not take leave, works on holidays, and has scant time for rest and recreation.

I am quite sure that Suseran and all those complaining are enjoying the truncated travel time of Berbicians with the Berbice Bridge. The President has expressed his disgust with the under-utilization of facilities provided for the populace, such as the Berbice branch of UG and through the Youth choice Initiative, among others.

After I read his letter I called relatives still living in the area and they said that they are so much better off today, except that the drug and crime situation needs to be addressed (which the President has instructed divisional head Steve Merai to do forthwith). They recalled days before when taxis refused to drive into Canje because of the state of the roads, which were absolutely impassable, even by bicycles, and when they had to trudge for miles to get potable water, except during rainy season. These days water reach upper stories in full flow. On the President’s promise to fix the roads, they said that, although they would welcome upgrades to infrastructure in their community, the roads are not really in a bad shape.

They told me how happy many people who used to live on the breadline are with their new homes, made possible with the Government’s housing drive, and places like Adelphi settlement which now have electricity.

And these changes are happening all over the country, except that persons suffering from myopia are limited to seeing only negative images.

President Jagdeo said during his interview at Little Rock Television that this year’s budget would expand tremendously on social sector spending, and that cognizance would be taken of people’s concerns during the considerations. However, there are those in society who would always be dissatisfied and disgruntled. The sad thing is that they succeed in infecting others with their pessimism.

Those who pretend to care for the people in the nation by criticizing the Government on everything that they do has no viable solutions of their own to offer, and they try to impede the administration when they attempt to institute p
olicies and programmes to improve the lives of the people, such as objecting to more spending in the sugar and housing sectors that will make one viable and the latter to provide adequate shelter for the poor who have no homes of their own.

Until (and if) the administrative equation changes, hopefully by General Elections, Bharrat Jagdeo is the caretaker of Guyana and all its people, even his detractors. Whatever efforts he makes on this nation’s behalf should be supported, because the constant petty nit-picking directed at the various Jagdeo initiatives could prove (and sometimes have proven) counterproductive to our national development paradigm.

The opposition cabal ostensibly, if one can be convinced by their actions and utterances, cares about the welfare of the people of this nation, yet how does it benefit the people of this nation for our country to be constantly bad-mouthed and criticized at every possible international forum, with tales and accusations so wildly exaggerated or skewed that the reality of a situation and/or the truth of a matter is most often submerged in a cesspit of destructive pimping of our national cohesion and upward mobility?

While it is to the advantage of a few to create rifts and mistrust between the races, especially the two major races of this country, a reality check would show that our daily lives are so intertwined – in our workplaces, in the marketplaces, in our educational structure, in our social places, within communities – at both individual and collective levels, that only those who are unfamiliar with our national construct, or who have deliberately blinded themselves, can accept the concept of marginalization of any one race by the other, which is continually being advanced by Guyana’s opposition collective. Even our Amerindian communities which, up to recent times, were the ones that were marginalized in our country have become integrated into the general society, to the extent where they feature prominently in the current major thrust at an international level by the Government – which is the Jagdeo conceptualized and driven Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS).

Suseran and others are constantly griping about the President’s travels abroad, but the President has explained, ad nauseum, “I want you to rest assured that, everyday we work, it is to improve our country.

“When we go abroad, it is not just a trip, we always try to advance the interest of the country.”

It is as a result of some of these trips that Guyana’s external debt burden has been reduced from 94 percent to an approximate 4 percents, and this has gone a far way to facilitating some of the improvements in the country that Suseran and his friends are currently enjoying.

These trips have also expanded markets and opportunities for Guyana and its people, and have put Guyana on the world map, with the LCDS in the place of Jonestown.

As the President has remarked, some people sit in rum shops and find solutions for all the problems in the country.

Most often, if one checks, these persons cannot run their own homes, nor control their own wives, so they let off steam against the Government, or beat their wives.