Misplaced Priorities in Guyana
Fri, Feb 11, '05
There is an economic concept that uses the choice between ?Guns and Butter? to illustrate the ?production possibility curve.? To put it simply, if an economy produces only two goods, guns and butter, the only way to produce more guns would be to lure labor and capital away from the butter industry.
Last October, when I was in Guyana taking in some of the unsponsored one-day cricket tournament, I marveled at the fact that practically every single traffic light in the capital city of Georgetown was non-functioning.
This resulted in a strange kind of vehicular jousting at the busy intersections, with drivers from all directions engaging in a game of sheet metal chicken to get to the other side. Throw in pedestrians, pedal cyclists, push cart vendors and the occasional dray cart and you get some idea of how chaotic the former Garden City has become.
What I did not remark on then was the amount of garbage and human refuse that has piled up around the city and along the various coasts. From discarded soft drink containers, Styrofoam food boxes to old refrigerators and the rusted hulks of cars and trucks, Guyana looked nothing like prospective link between South America and the Caribbean, but more like one huge garbage dump.
Still, one had to admire the spirit and the inner joyfulness of the people, in that amidst the squalor and daily struggle by many to eke out a living; they were quick to greet you with a smile and a kind word.
Since Christmas however, years of neglect and Governmental mismanagement, and general malaise in caring for the country?s waterways and drainage resources has visited a calamity of epic proportions on the people of Guyana. Since early January, residents of the East Coast of Guyana - where the first class ground of Enmore is situated - have been inundated with flood waters that had 200,000 residents, in this nation of approximately 750,000, wading through water that has been at times, chest deep.
This column is not long enough to enumerate or do justice to the untold misery, the lost livestock, livelihoods and wages that has afflicted the long suffering residents.
Yet, while Guyana is dealing with a lethal outbreak of the often fatal disease, Leptospirosis, the Government of Guyana made a point to issue a press release to announce that the construction of the new World Cup stadium would start promptly in April.
The estimated cost of the stadium will be US$25 million, which is being obtained through a US$6 million grant and a US$19 million loan from the Exim Bank of India.
While hosting a few World Cup matches in 2007 is an admirable goal, this is the same Government that would not commit US$304,000 per year towards the upkeep of the drainage canals and Kokers that drain the water off the land after rainfall. This is the same Government that paid a contractor G$400 million to increase the capacity of the Demerara Water Conservancy, which promptly failed during the unprecedented rains and contributed to the flooding.
So while the farmers and those engaged in animal husbandry either for profit or at the subsistence level along with other residents of the east coast ? well at least those who survive the various outbreaks of diseases ? try to pick up the dregs of their lives, the Government will be diverting much needed resources towards the construction of a stadium. A luxury that not many might be able to afford because with their livelihoods destroyed, attending a World Cup match will be the last thing on their minds.
When I spoke to my relatives in Guyana, I could hear the despair, the hopelessness in their voices, they are battling with rising food prices, shortages of some staples including vegetables, the fear of contracting a life-threatening illness.
Yet the Government has not announced a countrywide effort to clean up the coast. No studies have yet been initiated to deal with Guyana?s critical waste management problems. Yet they are committing US$25 million of which US$19 million will have to be footed by the taxpayers, the same ones who have been catching hell for the last month or so.
In a country that does not boast a full calendar of international events in search of venues to host them; a stadium is clearly a ?gun.? Improving the infrastructure and easing the misery of the citizens of Guyana is ?butter.? It is clear that the Government of Guyana has chosen the way of the gun over the lives and well-being of the people.