…shall be the PNC’s cry
The PNC held its rally at the Leonora Track and Field Stadium in Region 3 last Friday night. Since in 2015, the PNC-led coalition received a literal handful of votes from Leonora – a die-hard PPP constituency – a whole lot of bussing-in had to take place to present a decent audience for the cameras. But we couldn’t expect the Chronic to show us a pic of the parking lot with more busses than Big [KM1]Market Square on a Friday afternoon at 4 pm, could we?? Naah…another editor-in-chief would’ve been in for some serious busin’ from Nagamootoo’s lap dog!!
And so lo and behold, it was there that Granger announced to the “multitude of supporters” (said the Chronic biblically to ensure we knew were hearing from a man who attends church!) that he will be giving lands to the 7000 sugar workers he fired when he shut down four of the seven sugar estates if he were to be re-elected!! Wales was shuttered just before Christmas 2016 and the others the following year…but only now Granger remembered the fired sugar workers were still jobless?
Too late, shall be the cry when Granger’s day of judgement comes on March 2. Imagine this man, who’s as out of it as his Minister of Agriculture, Noel Holder (which takes some doing!) when it comes to agriculture, claiming, “…we did not throw Wales under the bus, we amalgamated Wales and Uitvlugt and many of the people from Wales have gotten jobs from Uitvlugt.” Amalgamated, eh?? Was a single acre of the 8000 acres of cane cultivated at Wales “amalgamated” into Uitvlugt’s acreage? Of the 1700 workers from Wales, could he say how many are cutting cane at Uitvlugt, 22 miles away? Does he remember that the 237 workers “amalgamated” into Uitvlugt all demanded severance when they couldn’t manage the “commute”??
And what about the cane farmers of Wales who used to supply 30% of the cane to that factory?? Did Granger remember the road Holder promised to build to bring their canes to Uitvlugt?? Your Eyewitness knows that because of his advanced senility might pose a challenge to him, but surely he remembers that at the same time he was throwing those 7000 workers into the streets, he’d arranged for a $2 billion loan from the CDB to clear the lands and canals behind four villages – Ithaca, Buxton, BV and Mocha – and provided seed money and seedlings, plus cattle to the villagers to make them sustainable cash crops and livestock farmers. Is he going to provide the same support for the fired cane workers??
On March 3, there shall be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth in Granger’s Camp!
Time longer than twine!!
…as usual
Remember that “bat dung” respiratory problem with those Chinese workers opening some manganese ore tunnels at Mathews Ridge in Region 1?? They had to be flown into Georgetown Hospital and one died. Eventually, they had to be flown back to China. We found out that we really didn’t have quarantine facilities to handle even a dozen patients.
So your Eyewitness was quite surprised when confronted by questions on our response to the coronavirus pandemic that’s roiling the entire world’s health systems, Health Minister Volda Lawrence blithely stated Guyana’s “prepared and equipped with what is needed to handle the situation”!! Really?? For instance, how many “negative-pressure airborne infection isolation rooms” do we have ready and waiting to handle the cases that are sure to come our way??
After all, scores of Guyanese and Chinese businessmen who’d been going back and forth between here and China since the outbreak??
Even the US has admitted they’re unprepared for the disease. So who’s Lawrence fooling?
…for hyping
One of the major reasons the PNC held out till March to schedule elections was that it wanted oil money to start flowing.
So even though oil prices are plummeting because of coronavirus, Energy Czar Bynoe announced our first million-barrel sale’s scheduled for later this month.
Before March 2!!