{"id":44970,"date":"2018-03-23T08:00:06","date_gmt":"2018-03-23T12:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/?p=44970"},"modified":"2018-03-23T09:11:36","modified_gmt":"2018-03-23T13:11:36","slug":"blaming-the-victim","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/blaming-the-victim\/","title":{"rendered":"Blaming the Victim…"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\u2026in sugar<\/p>\n<p>The arrogance of this Government and its minions knows no bounds. Your Eyewitness still can\u2019t get over the comments made by the PNC-appointed REO of Reg 6 at the event to commemorate the 105th anniversary of 14 workers murdered by the colonial government on behalf of the sugar producers in 1913. She said the 5700 fired sugar workers are too \u201ctimid and afraid\u201d to take advantage of the Government\u2019s \u201cdiversification\u201d of the sugar industry, and wanted them to know what it took for them to be \u201cenjoying the good life\u201d delivered by the PNC Government!!<br \/>\nCan you believe this? Especially being delivered to folks whose parents were among the 14 killed and scores wounded. And yes, that kind of carnage couldn\u2019t be inflicted by single-shot rifles, but by one of the new \u201cmachine guns\u201d that would be used in the upcoming \u201cGreat War\u201d. It was like shooting fishes in a tank. And they would have grown up on stories of their parents\u2019 sacrifice, not delivered to them from books, but at the knees of those who lived to tell of the horror.<br \/>\n\u201cTimid and afraid\u201d?? Does this REO know of the grit and determination it takes to wake up even before the cock has crowed to head to the fields to cut their minimum quota of two and a half tons of cane? And then fetching those two and a half tons of cane ON THEIR HEADS to dump in punts after jumping dozens of drains? And to do that six days a week for months? Does the REO know of the courage it takes to be a cane cutter, knowing before they turn fifty, \u201ctheir hair will be grey but not with years\u201d? And with broken bodies? Defining them as \u201ccane harvesters\u201d \u2013 as the PNC did in the seventies \u2013 suggesting they were gathering cane like flowers, didn\u2019t change anything about lives that were \u201cnasty, short and brutish\u201d.<br \/>\nBut what \u201cdiversification\u201d is the REO talking about. The PNC Government PROMISED that all right; but where was it delivered? Have they even SUGGESTED grading the fields that are specially adapted for sugar cane to accommodate, say, lentils? How about \u201caquaculture,\u201d which was also mentioned? Is this another case of waiting till \u201cyou GOTTA go\u201d, before you start building latrines? Well, the s***t has hit the fan\u2026but sadly it\u2019s the cane cutters who\u2019re caught in the mess.<br \/>\n\u201cGood life\u201d?? Where?? Your Eyewitness isn\u2019t even confining his question to the sugar belt\u2026pick ANY community outside of the Government\u2019s ministers and favoured insiders and let\u2019s see this \u201cgood life\u201d!<br \/>\nThis is the kind of contempt that\u2019s developed when a party knows it is assured of being returned to office.<br \/>\nBy hook AND by crook!! Mostly by crook.<br \/>\n\u2026in green power generation<br \/>\nWell, here it was, one citizen wasn\u2019t \u201ctimid and afraid\u201d to respond to the new Government\u2019s call for the nation to \u201cGo green\u201d. But, unfortunately, he dared to believe the Government really meant for Guyanese to explore and exploit non-fossil sources for generating energy, and not just painting his Hotel APNU green!! The sad tale unfolded in the eastern end of our dear country (but no \u201cwise men\u201d advised this hotelier!), where the enterprising citizen imported a windmill that could generate 350KVA of electricity.<br \/>\nBeing in excess of what he could utilise, he\u2019s frustrated by the Ministry of Public Infrastructure and GPL refusal to take off this power from his hands \u2013 in Berbice where power shortages and outages are endemic during the day. In so many words, the poor fellow confessed it was like tilting at windmills, and he\u2019s about ready to ship the windmill from whence it came! (India, not Holland!!)<br \/>\nSeems like GPL has informed him that, unlike, say, California, where you can supply ANY amount of excess electricity to the grid (and be credited) in a process called \u201cnet metering\u201d, you have to generate at least 1.5MW before GPL will look at you!!<br \/>\nThe poor fella would\u2019ve been better served if he\u2019d painted his hotel green!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u2026in sugar The arrogance of this Government and its minions knows no bounds. Your Eyewitness still can\u2019t get over the comments made by the PNC-appointed REO of Reg 6 at the event to commemorate the 105th anniversary of 14 workers murdered by the colonial government on behalf of the sugar producers in 1913. She said the 5700 fired sugar workers are too \u201ctimid and afraid\u201d to take advantage of the Government\u2019s \u201cdiversification\u201d of the sugar industry, and wanted them to know what it took for them to be \u201cenjoying the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[42],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44970","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-eyewitness"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"gutentor_comment":0,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44970","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44970"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44970\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44971,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44970\/revisions\/44971"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44970"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44970"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.guyanatimesinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44970"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}