HUNDREDS turned up on Monday, May 5th at the site of the Berbice Indian Cultural Committee’s (BICC) Highbury Monument in Region 6 (East Berbice/Corentyne), to mark the 176th anniversary of the arrival of Indians to the shores of Guyana.

At the site, Attorney-General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall, representing the Government, stressed that the current Administration will continue to lead the struggle started by the nation’s ancestors.
“As a Government, it is our responsibility to facilitate development to ensure that the ideals and aspirations of the ancestors of all our people are realised,” he said.

Nandlall continued: “…as we commemorate the arrival of the first batch of Indian indentured servants to these shores 176 years ago, the story of their struggles, challenges and triumphs are well recorded and known.

“However, as we celebrate and salute their legacy today, we must reflect upon where we are, and use their adversities and victories to inspire us to overwhelm the difficulties we face.

“Many of the problems with which they grappled, confront us still.
They did superlatively and under greater constraints; we live a far better life now. Our circumstances are vastly superior, our victories and accomplishments must naturally be greater. They would have expected no less from us. I believe that expectation to be well founded…our task is to surpass them, a tall order indeed.”

Nandlall posited that Guyanese can achieve such success only by working tirelessly to create a world in which all of our people are “unshackled from the chains of poverty and exploitation” of every kind, and where hunger is absent.

“Our task is therefore a perpetual one from which we must never shirk,” the AG said.

Nandlall also noted that the struggle for better working conditions; for better living conditions; for better wages and salaries and, indeed, for a better life continues.

CHALLENGES CONTINUE
He said that in the pursuit of a better life for all Guyanese, the current Administration faces challenges of its own. “As a Government, we are struggling to provide better health care for all of our people, the same objective which our forefathers pursued. However, we are faced with an Opposition that votes down budgetary allocations for a specialty hospital.

“As a Government, as we try to create better living and working conditions for our people, we are confronted by an Opposition in the National Assembly who votes down a hydro-power project that is so important to our development, denying our farmers a manufacturing sector to process that which they produce at Black Bush and elsewhere.

“As a Government, as we try to enact vital legislation to combat money laundering and meet our international obligation, we face an Opposition in the National Assembly who are prepared to cause us to be blacklisted, thereby financially and economically estranging us from 190 countries, who may sever trade relations with us, and (thereby) affecting our ability to access financing from developmental partners, for example, the international financial institutions of the world.”

He accordingly underscored the fact that the struggles of Guyana’s ancestors to achieve a better life for us must continue.

“The Government remains ready, able and willing to lead that struggle,” Nandlall stressed.

Also in attendance at Monday’s event were Region Six Chairman, David Armogan, Health Minister, Dr. Bheri Ramsaran, and Guyana Rice Producers Association (RPA) General Secretary, Dharamkumar Seeraj.

The first batch of East Indian immigrants to British Guiana landed at Plantation Highbury, EBB, approximately eight miles from New Amsterdam. (Vanessa Narine)