Dear Editor
LANDS purchased by Afro-Guyanese after emancipation have been under attack by the then colonial state because it provided the freed slave with living space and potential independence, taxes paid by the villages for drainage works was redirected to fund indentureship, causing lands to flood and the loss of livelihoods, creating wage earners from proprietors, thus diminishing independence.

Those lands that were inveigled from its village owners then and over a century later have never left the memory of those descendants; their concerns in 2017are not based on prescriptive rights, but on stolen rights of purchase. Three media declarations made by PPP party members… Madam Gail Teixeira, Opposition Leader Bharrat Jagdeo and the tremendously misinformed Harry Gill do present a peculiar sensation of guilt, but, that Pradoville Two is presumed to have joined the indiscretions of 19th/20th centuries Booker Bros. McConnell & Co. Ltd.

And others are a result of whose deliberate scheming and dishonest actions? The callously opportunistic Harry Gill declares in his letter, “Why ACDA did not take this matter to Forbes Burnham or to Desmond Hoyte?” The answer is that ACDA did not exist when these former Presidents governed this land. Back then also found ‘Sugar’ as a serious contributor to the GDP, despite the PPP’s sabotage of the sugar industry. Since the fall of sugar in Guyana and worldwide, there will be downsizing of that industry and rather than have the issue of these lands from Guysuco confused as lands to do as the state finds it necessary, there is no better time to reassert legitimate claims for those and other purchased lands.

In the early 90s when President Jagan came to power and ACDA was in existence, President Jagan had sent Brindley Benn to discuss what our foremost concerns were; among other items was the issue currently addressed, but though he was receptive, Cheddi Jagan died before the issues could be activated. As for the legacy of President Forbes Burnham, in 1966 Independence found about a third of the mostly Afro-Guyanese population of Georgetown living in ‘Nigger Yards.’

This was a double lot occupied by some 20 families, with two latrines and bathrooms, a middle yard standpipe that was a literal battlefield. Unhealthy and contentious, with names like Comacho yard, Jardine Yard, Slap Can Yard, Federation Yard, YY Yard here, there and everywhere. It was Forbes Burnham who from 1972 addressed those socially accepted concentration camps , with South, North, Festival city, Roxanne Burnham Gardens-in Ruimveldt, among other living spaces.

He provided an exodus from slums to ownership, none of you in the PPP can take that away from him. Jagdeo of all people, the Pradoville Two conspirator, the compulsive deceiver questions if the land issue will provide jobs? With the population of villages bursting at the seams, villagers forced to pay rent elsewhere because of congested situations, regaining land spaces, amounts to one reality, that of ‘Opportunity.’

Over the last 20 years there has been unscrupulous collaboration between lawyers, people at the registrar and politically linked criminal businessmen directed at stealing village and private lands, some succeeded, including relatives of political top brass, and I am not referring exclusively to Pradoville Two, whether it is eventually proved to be indeed part of the post-emancipation owned lands. These indiscretions have to be reversed. Many incidents outside of the Afro-Guyanese community also occurred, they will also benefit from the corrective regulations that emerge from this African Land CoI.

Regards
Barrington Braithwaite