Dear Editor,
I WOULD like to take issue with my old Comrade and Friend, Ralph Ramkarran, about the statement in his recent Conversation Tree article entitled “Leader of the Opposition” – “Our new-found oil wealth from which many have not yet benefitted.” It would have been good if he had continued, “in the ways they have been expecting”.
There is much understandable reluctance to think of general investments in infrastructure, schools and hospitals, education and training, electricity and internet as benefitting us individually.
But this is the essence of a nation’s growth and development, making each of us empowered, – more capable, more productive – in whatever we do individually and all together. Our daily lives are made much more convenient, efficient and effective, and improved tremendously by investments in our society – it is those investments in roads, bridges, hospitals, schools, etc… which distinguish a more developed society from a less developed one.

Further, let us keep in mind that we have had programmes to give some cash to everyone – the G$100,000 to every adult Guyanese in Guyana; the cash grant to parents and guardians of every child in school and a number of other cash grants to meet particular needs and aid the taking of particular opportunities.
Allow me to tell this story. Guyana has a Commission with South Korea which should meet every three to four years in one country then the other. It fell to me once to head the Guyana side at a meeting in Guyana.

Travelling with the Head of the Korean side through Georgetown, noticing the garbage he said, “we have garbage disposing technologies which you might find useful.” I replied, “no doubt, but perhaps even before that we need to get to appropriate understanding of how we get to a developed society”.
He replied, ” I know that too well. I recall about 1960, after Korean War, we South Koreans had very little, living on alms, gifts of wheat from Argentina, and at the same time, General Pak began building infrastructure. I remember being in the marches and demonstrations with my parents and grandparents shouting – Give us food, not infrastructure – but I must say now it is that infrastructure that got us going”.

So, we Guyanese should think of South Korea receiving food aid in 1960, and when infrastructure got on the road, to South Korea today, producing Samsung, Hyundai, Kia, Doosan, LG, and reaching developed world status.

We should take every opportunity to let our people know that investments in infrastructure and general investments in our people and country to raise our capability to do things, is our way forward to a prosperous, sustainable future with oil and after oil.
Yours sincerely,
Samuel A A Hinds.
Former Prime Minister and Former President.
Ambassador to the USA and OAS.