MILLIONS have been expended on education, health, housing and many other social services over the last several years.

This is quite laudable, despite a plethora of destructive criticisms by certain opposing detractors when the good things done are rarely, if ever, appreciated. A developing country like Guyana ought not to be expected to be one hundred per cent perfect. Even the most developed nations are not perfect. It is felt that concern ought to be focused on whether the net results of these enormous expectations have brought significant benefits to the vast majority of the populace, particularly at the lower and most vulnerable levels of society. This is debatable, if not questionable, in many respects.

Education has perhaps been the largest beneficiary of tax payers’ money, but it has become increasingly difficult to concede that the benefits accruing in this particular area have been of appreciable significance in relation to the enormous investment.

Judgement ought not to be made primarily on the number of distinctions and credits at one sitting. This, in isolation, certainly does not produce well-rounded people.

The proof rather lies in the positive, qualitative effects on the total society. This is, however,  jeopardized by migratory trends over the past several years where Guyana lost skills, and these skills have been the gain of developed nations, and even within the Caribbean states.

In reality, we seem to educate for export at the national expense.

In much broader terms, behavioural patterns indicate continuing general ignorance, illiteracy, criminality, brutality, gross disrespect for authority, disrespect for senior citizenry, lack of consideration for the incapacitated and other evils that education ought to have remedied or miniaturized in contemporary society.

Our forebears with few exceptions never had the benefit of secondary or tertiary education. They did not have the electronic media. But they were comparatively superior in societal behaviour relationships that we have not been able to emulate despite our enumerated advantages.

The comparison might similarly be odious in relation to health where, despite sophisticated equipment, modern drugs and a variety of specialties, there are endless daily queues at hospitals, medical centres and doctors’ clinics.

In addition, our hospital beds throughout the country are invariably inadequate to meet excessive patient demands. The moot question is whether we have been deriving good value for the enormous funds spent on the health system annually over the last several years.

It is not only the Government’s responsibility, but also the people’s responsibility to ensure the maintenance of good health by taking much more care of our bodies.

We take good care of our movable and immovable property, but we neglect our bodies and those of our family mainly through the junk we consume daily because the taste is nice, the voracious consumption of alcohol and a variety of malts that slowly but surely poison the system.

Consider the junk we permit our children to purchase at food stalls outside our schools without giving the slightest thought to where preparation is done and whether the food handlers have been approved by the competent authority.

We are callous about the lives of our most valuable assets mainly because, unlike our ancestors, we pay scant attention to parenting as they did in the good old days. We are consumed by the television, entertainment, sports and of course, the ‘get –rich-quick’ syndrome at the expense of our own children.

It must also be appreciated that the Government has made very commendable strides in the area of housing. Shelter has always been an essential need of humanity, even in the age of the ‘cave men’. In contemporary civilized society, people are expected to pay for housing irrespective of dimensions. But one could only pay for this benefit if income is available to pay for it and, also, to maintain it in acceptable condition. Otherwise, the last stage might well become far worse than the first.

The situation with respect to education, health and housing highlights that the jobless, the low wage earners and the under-employed in particular would be at a severe disadvantage in any housing drive.

As a consequence, it is indispensably necessary to create jobs on an unprecedented scale to complement housing initiatives in order to secure the desired effects with respect to socio-economic development.

Former Prime Minister Basdeo Panday of Trinidad and Tobago had once made the very important point that the influx of foreign investment in that country did not bring along the anticipated influx of jobs, primarily because the majority of investments were not labour intensive.

He pointed out that because of the high-technology nature of the enterprises under reference only a very few of them employed more than fifteen workers!

We in Guyana often talk glibly about foreign investment, but we ought not to forget what the same craved foreign investment did to labour in the bauxite industry at Linden, Ituni and Kwakwani in the eighties and within recent times at Aroaima, not to mention the expatriate-owned logging and gold mining industries in the hinterland.

Bauxite alone has lost well over nine thousand jobs in the last twenty years with consequential socio-economic dislodgement, deterioration and decay at Linden, Ituni, Kwakwani and Everton. The evidence is very visible today. There is more than adequate liquidity locally for Guyanese entrepreneurs to engage in massive labour intensive investment.

Unfortunately, most of our banks, despite an abundance of liquidity, raise far too many imponderables to prospective borrowers. They seem to have a preference for investing Guyanese depositors’ money overseas.

In order to make a significant dent on our acute labour situation, it is very imperative to accelerate the current agricultural drive like a military campaign throughout the length and breadth of Guyana, focusing attention on strategic rural areas.

I had occasion to be on a hospitality industry programme in Florida in 1988. At that time that U.S State boasted over 2,500 citrus plantations that produced fresh oranges for export in addition to the boxed, bottled and canned world famous Florida orange juice that we in the Caribbean and elsewhere consume at a very high cost.

Those 2,500 plantations, using an average 500 workers each meant a labour absorption of at least 1,250,000 workers. And this number does not include employees in the ancillary production process in the factories, the offices, the contract trucks to convey cargo to wharves, airports and distribution centres.

Our private sector has been designated the “Engine of Growth” but, in reality, this appears to be limited to the wholesaling and retailing of imported products, some of which have alternatives right here in Guyana.

We seem not to be able to jettison our ‘Colonial Mentality’ forty five years after political independence! In effect, we slavishly sponsor the employment of several thousands of workers in foreign lands, despite the fact that we have sizeable markets at our doorstep which would find it more economical to purchase products from Guyana.

Beyond the Takutu river there are over 40 million Brazilians, not to mention Venezuela, Suriname and the Caribbean islands. There are over 5,000 hotels within the CARICOM umbrella at present buying their citrus products from Florida because in the 21st Century, Guyana, a country of 83,000 square miles does not have even 20 square miles under citrus cultivation. What a burning shame!

The Demerara sugar estates have thousands of acres of well prepared sugarcane land that could readily be converted to citrus cultivation at very little cost. These plantations could find employment for thousands of people.

The existing sugar factories could be easily converted to manufacturing plants to process not only oranges but grapefruit, limes and tangerine for local and export consumption.

Our so-called unprofitable Demerara estates are veritable gold mines upon which we are sitting lamenting the fate of sugar, ignoring viable alternatives that could bring enormous wealth to Guyana.

Finally, the predicted escalating food shortage world-wide definitely indicates the wisdom of our agricultural drive in all its phases. It is certainly the main key to Guyana’s everlasting prosperity. It must be the final solution to our social and economic problems that would usher in a better life for the entire nation.

PULL QUOTE:
‘…the predicted escalating food shortage world-wide definitely indicates the wisdom of our agricultural drive in all its phases. It is certainly the main Key to Guyana’s everlasting prosperity. It must be the final solution to our social and economic problems that would usher in a better life for the entire nation.’

PULL QUOTE:
Our private sector has been designated the ‘Engine of Growth’ but, in reality, this appears to be limited to the wholesaling and retailing of imported products, some of which have alternatives right here in Guyana.