IN a letter that appeared in the (press) on Saturday March 5, 2011, which was written by Mr.  Orrin Gordon with reference to the work of the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC), it seems as though Mr. Orrin Gordon was expecting that the ERC was on a fact-finding mission in Linden, or he went there expecting to hear that all the problems of Linden will   not be solved so they can continue to tell Lindeners nobody cares about them.

Sir, I was at that meeting, and I clearly remember that the Bishop said the theme of the meeting is “Inter-Intra Community Dialogue”
He also said that “if we have problems and we do not talk then we will not be able to solve anything.  After all the guns and wars and killings, people still have to sit together and talk”. I believe in this regard a special case study was designed.  Even the two films shown were about Conflict Management.

When the time came to address the issues that affect the people of the Region Ten community and consider what recommendations can be made, several persons including Mr. Orrin Gordon and Mr. Philip Bynoe made presentations.

Mr. Gordon did address the issues he mentioned in his letter; however, there and then a female, who described herself as a Recruiting Officer, took the microphone and told the gathering that it was Mr. Orrin Gordon who was encouraging persons not to work for contractors from out of Linden. The alternative is that workers had to be brought in from outside of Linden.

I, like many others, am very strong on the issue that a certain percentage of all contracts to be executed in Linden must be given to contractors within the Linden community. The real problem is that, although Linden is predominately populated by Afro Guyanese, we are divided along party lines.  Our own Members of Parliament do not speak to us, so let us not make the Bishop an object of our own failures and inertia.

When Mr. Philip Bynoe addressed the meeting, he not only identified the issues that were affecting our community, he also outlined what he and his group, called the Linden Salvation Council, were doing to remedy the situation.

Miss Vanessa Kissoon, PNC MP, had an opportunity to speak, but instead of using the time allotted to her to address the issues that affected the people, she used it for political purposes, where she put a good cussing on several Government ministers. This then begs the question as to whether some persons (in Linden) are really interested in the welfare of their community.

On the question of the report, the Bishop did point out that he had convened sixty-five neighbourhood Democratic Councils and seven Municipal Intra-Inter Community Dialogue Meetings.  That the report from all the meetings will be collated into one report that will be laid in Parliament.  The idea of the meetings was to train persons in mediation and peace building, given our ethnic diversity.  If the people who live in Linden want our issues to be addressed, then I do believe that we should sit in discussion with our Members of Parliament.

During the group session at that meeting, I was part of a group that was facilitated by a Pandit (I do not remember his name but he did a good job).

The topic of discrimination came up again and he enquired who was discriminating against whom? The answer that he got was that Lindeners were discriminating against fellow Lindeners.