GONE are the days when residents in Guyana’s hinterland Regions had to depend on State handouts for development and only get a chance to have their concerns heard during the elections period.

This is according to the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) member, Mervyn Williams when he addressed members of the media on Friday. He stated that through the hinterland development policy established under the PNC government in the 1960s, 70 indigenous communities and four indigenous districts, with as many as 15 settlements, were issued with land titles. When the Coalition government took office in 2015, President David Granger renewed the commitment to reducing the gap between the hinterland and coast which Williams said is being realised through the Hinterland 10-Point plan.

The coalition has therefore approved titles to eight communities including Parabara in the deep South Rupununi. “The foregoing is commendable, since it brought to an end the PPP’s failed approach at hinterland development, a policy that dictated what the indigenous people could and could not do. The policy of handouts as a means of control and the scant regard that was shown to our indigenous peoples, in which one former President had suggested that if another PPP former President was present, he would have slapped a young man from the hinterland for expressing his views. Those days are over,” Williams said.

“The President Granger led coalition government correctly brought an end to the PPP’s practice of treating our indigenous peoples as only useful at elections time. Our hinterland and its people are on the course to genuine development and they intend to stay there.”
The PNCR Member also highlighted that coalition is proud to have established the Hinterland Employment and Youth Services (HEYS) which has trained over 4,000 young people of which 2,500 of these have been able to set up their own business.

He stated that this ends the dependency on the State for handouts by these youths even as over 2,000 Stimulus Grants were also distributed.

Added to this, 350 km of roads have been rehabilitated in the hinterland; bridges critical to the development have been constructed; there has been first-time access to potable water, electricity, radio stations and the internet in many villages and women in the Rupununi are developing their own businesses.

“President Granger and the APNU+AFC have been teaching the hinterland how to fish rather than the PPP dictatorial approach of giving a fish so that they can dominate and control indigenous peoples for electoral gain. The PNCR is proud of the hundreds of our indigenous brothers and sisters who are now fishing and are on the road to self-reliance,” Williams stated. “This is a far cry from the days when the PPP dictators treated the hinterland and its people with contempt and used whatever little development occurred in the hinterland as the basis for accumulation of wealth by the corrupt and dishonest PPP friends and family regime.”

He assured Guyanese in the hinterland region that these developments realised will continue into the future until all of Guyana is equally developed.