Killing…

… a community
How does a government say it’s concerned about “ordinary people” and their welfare and yet the very next day, places 1700 of them on the streets with begging bowls? But maybe with practice such duplicity gets easier, no? After all, just a few months ago the same government fired 1972 mostly Amerindian youths from the Community Service Organisation.

They probably figured when making the decision to shut down the entire Wales Sugar plantation, “Ah well, it’s ONLY 1700 being fired this time!” Ignoring, of course, that each of these persons are supporting at least four other persons – a total of 8500 mouths that’ll go hungry. Do these people know what goes on in these sugar estates? There’s absolutely no other source of employment for these unskilled people.

When the talk of closing estates had first been mooted, there were suggestions to parcel out lands to the workers so they could maybe sustain themselves through peasant farming. Like the neighbouring communities in Canals # 1 and 2. Suddenly alternative employment is off the agenda: “You’re on your own, folks!!”

It’s rather cruel to hold out hope to workers that they’ll possibly find employment at Uitvlugt! Have these office-bound mandarins even looked at a map of the area? One estate’s up the Demerara River while the other’s on the Atlantic Coast. And it takes a heck of a lot of travelling for the twain to meet.

And the same constraint puts a lie to the promise of “farmers’ cane” being transported to Uitvlugt. Ain’t no canal connecting the two estates – for the very good reason there’s a huge conservancy between them. This is not like LBI and Enmore. Canes will have to be transported by tractor/trailers – using the single congested public roadway that’s already past capacity. And if they want to transport canes in the night – there’s still the cost of the hundreds of tractors that’ll be needed – plus filling them up with diesel. All of this adds to the cost of production – which is already way too high at Uitvlugt.

What we’re going to suggest to this government is that while sugar cane mightn’t be feasible at Wales they cannot just abandon all those prime agricultural lands that’s drained and irrigated. They should go back to their original plan – parcel out the land in 15-acre plots and invite some food corporations to set up factories to process crops that make economic sense because they’re in demand. Unlike sugar.

We’re not saying that it’s going to be easy, but common humanity deserves at least some alternative livelihood be found for these poor people.
Aren’t we our brothers’ keeper?