-Dr Jagdeo says

DESPITE the opposition hiding under the veil of pretending to care for indigenous persons’ rights, People’s Progressive Party (PPP) General Secretary, Dr Bharrat Jagdeo has reminded them of their “miserable history,” especially when it comes to land titling.

Efforts by the opposition to ramp up their political narratives were exposed by the PPP General Secretary during a press conference held at the party’s Robb Street headquarters on Thursday.

As he reminded the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) of how they left Amerindian communities on the backburners of development, Dr Jagdeo first touched on the subject of land titling.

He said that the previous coalition administration had dismantled the land titling
programme, although the PPP administration had left funds from their forest- credit sales.

The PPP General Secretary further stated: “We recall also Granger trying to dilute the Amerindian land approach or the titling of Amerindian lands by linking it up through one commission with ancestral lands and Amerindian land; and we [the PPP] fought against that and then he had to retreat [from] that.”

He added: “So their [APNU+AFC] history on titling Amerindian communities is a miserable one…”

Moreover, Dr Jagdeo said that when the PPP assumed office, about six per cent of Guyana was titled Amerindian lands and when they left office in 2015, it was over 14 per cent.

Notably, with $800 million allocated this year for the continuation of the Amerindian Land-Titling project, the government has shown that it is committed to ensuring that the Indigenous people get the legal recognition for the lands they occupy.
Moreover, shifting his attention to the Amerindian Act, Dr Jagdeo boldly pointed out that it was under the PPP government that it was passed in 2006.

“We had a number of PNC Members of Parliament at that time who opposed the passage of this Act,” he said, while underscoring that when APNU+AFC was in office they wanted to “revise the Act with the purpose of diluting its provisions.”
In the Amerindian Act of 2006, indigenous villages gained access to land titles, providing resources for village-level development. One of the stand-out provisions of this Act is the provision that grants Amerindian villages subsurface rights for small and medium-sized mining activities.

While flaying the opposition for firing nearly 2,000 Community Support Officers (CSOs), the PPP General Secretary said that under the PPP government, close to 3,000 CSOs have been rehired and this is outside of the part-time job scheme.

This is an initiative aimed at developing young Amerindians in the various villages and communities through the creation of job opportunities and building capacity and strengthening their individual interests and skills.

The CSOs engagement was launched in 2014 under the Youth Entrepreneurship and Apprenticeship Programme (YEAP). It targeted some 2,000 youths between the ages of 16-40 in Regions One, Seven, Eight and Nine.

YEAP was part of the then PPP government’s commitment to youth development and advancement, and investment in the lives of the Indigenous People.

Also, while debunking the repetitive narrative that the oil money is not reaching the people, Dr Jagdeo said: “It’s not true that the oil resources are not reaching Region Nine. We pointed out a million times that all the oil money that we collected in 2023, if spent, can only finance less than 30 per cent of the budget, and that the budget has for every region including Region Nine …a state-of-the-art hospital, etc. So every community is getting resources.”