AGAINST my better judgement I feel compelled to write in response to a few confused, distorted notions conveyed in a letter penned by one Emile Mervin in the Kaieteur News February 08.
It is mind-numbing to read such a lengthy narrative only to find it utterly pointless and contradictory.
In this letter Mervin alluded to overseas-based Guyanese, who he said are under the misconception that things are looking up in Guyana and I quote “don’t look at the number of new houses and businesses going up around you, or the number of consumer goods available to you in the marketplace to determine your own feeling of being better off. That’s a fake sense of self-betterment because they have nothing to do with your actual state of living.”
You can’t be serious Mr. Mervin, are you saying that the fact that Guyanese can now easily access one of the life’s basic amenities, the security that comes with being a homeowner is a fake sense of self-betterment?
Are you also saying that the fact that our market shelves now offer the same variety of consumer goods as any other part of the world as opposed to the 1980s when we were not importing anything is not a manifestation of highly improved trade relations with other developing countries?
I personally would like to associate Mervin with an estimable personality; however the antiquated, backward stream of thought that he churns up for public consumption no less, begs the question.
You seem terribly confused Mr. Mervin, and I am tempted to think, that if you notice the new housing schemes and businesses, yet cannot equate that to development, then perhaps it is not within your capacity to comprehend the notion of development in a developing country because clearly, your frame of reference is skewed.
Allow me therefore, to offer you a Guyanese perspective from someone living in Guyana, there are daily visible upgrades across the infrastructural and human resource capacity and people need to stop undermining what is by saying what is not.
I encourage you to shed the palpable curtains that blind you to the reality that exist, which is the dawn of a better tomorrow.
KHEMRAJ CIPRIANI