GODFRE SKEETE’s “There was no plan B in Linden for when bauxite declined”, is as frank and candid as can be on the Linden crises, and also serves as an indictment on the APNU and AFC, with regards their advice to constituents there. One believes that should there have been many more of his opinions publicly expressed, maybe wiser judgment would have prevailed.
Of course, he is correct in exposing former PNC Leader, Robert Corbin for “claiming that Lindeners deserve to pay low electricity charges as a right because of their four-decades ago contribution to the bauxite industry.” Certainly, this is a “new spin” on the contention, Skeete concludes.
Such attempt at misrepresentation and deception from such a national leader as Corbin, fully explains all of the reasons why Lindeners have been misled onto  a pathway that now threatens their already precarious existence, and the national economy in the process. The stark reality of the situation at this moment is that the mining town and its residents will suffer even more, since jobs are being lost daily.
Lindeners, particularly those former bauxite workers’ contribution to the national economy, are no different to, say, the sugar workers of Guysuco, or any other category. All have toiled and sweat; the latter two claim no special dispensation because of their labours, except their benefits on retirement. But they have been paying their fair share of electricity charges, which the bauxite workers at Linden must also now pay.
I have often posited the point, similarly to Skeete’s, that Linden’s current problems lie in the fact of there being “no plan B when bauxite declined.”
Apart from paying “big bucks” to Lindeners, the political masters of the day never envisaged the possible realities of its decline. Worst, is that they never planned any viable kind of socio-economic development programmes for the town, in the medium or long term. Not even the old medical services were ever refurbished, until the PPP/C government delivered a state-of-the-art billion dollar hospital to residents two years ago. Had Linden and its residents’ future welfare been genuinely thought of by the PNC government, that geographic space would have been an economic showpiece, inclusive of a hive of productive commercial activity during that party’s reign.
As difficult as it may be for many who would have read Skeete’s  objective  views, there have been many truths expounded; and, gradually, the sun is beginning to rise, with the inevitable truths unfolding, exposing all the misinformation peddled by those who organize the protests, especially the Region Ten Administration.