STABROEK NEWS, Thursday, August 15, 2013 Page 3A by Shaun Michael SamarooLying idyllic, under warm sun or lush rain, like a

sprawling picture of paradise, Berbice promises its people an experience of exotic, prosperous charm.

Yet, “promises are comfort only to fools”, Berbice resident, Mahaise Ramjas, says.

Ramjas, 60, says he knows what that proverb feels like. Elected on the slate of the political party, the People’s Pro-gressive Party/Civic (PPP/C), to the local village council in 1994, Ramjas today voices vociferous regrets for his Council role.

Ramjas said that the 1994 democratic local government elections promised Berbice serious community development. Now, two decades lat-er, his indignant voice echoes across the land in stinging protest against lack of development in his community, poor local government adminis-tration and deep disappointment with the Party, the Minister of Local Government, Regional authorities and the local Interim Management Committee (IMC).

Ramjas’ passion for his community comes across with loud seriousness. He wants to see his neighbours live the Berbice promise. He works hard to overcome the broken system that sti-fl es that promise. His loud, vociferous voice resonates across the Corentyne, his complaints falling off on seemingly unresponsive offi cials, while his passion, his belief in the Berbice

promise, pushes him to protest with undying determination. Ramjas re-fuses to give up. He pushes on, fi ghting for Berbice to feel its potential rise from its fertile fi elds.

Ramjas welcomed Sta-broek News to his home at Adventure Village on the Corentyne, with his family gathered under his sprawl-ing Victorian-style house, sitting in comfortable ham-

mocks or on a wooden bench, the wide open yard housing a muddy red trac-tor and a sparkling new, sturdy iron pump, painted grey, that he built to pump water from his rice fi elds.

He wants Stabroek News to publish his story, hoping that he could see action from offi cials about his concerns. In the media, he sees hope for his citizen

voice to play its real role in the democratic body politic, a role that the political sys-tem failed to pro-duce.

After Minister of Local Government, Ganga Per-saud, and Prime Minister Sam Hinds sat in unrespon-sive silence in Parliament when House Speaker Ra-

phael Trotman asked each a direct question concerning local government elections, on July 22 last, Stabroek News chose to showcase the impact on local com-munities of a 19-year lapse in local government elec-tions.

This newspaper found that the devastating impact, on the ground, across the country, of the lack of lo-cal government elections, leaves Guyanese citizens feeling fed-up that Central Government and Parlia-ment could not enable them to govern themselves, for so long.

Ramjas voices that fed-up feeling with particular eloquence. He articulates the voice of the Guyanese people, and echoes the heart of the nation. Without local government elections, communities across the land suffer from an inertia that leads to a devastation of the inner core of the Guyanese nation.

Ramjas feels it, and de-spite facing hopelessness for 19 years, fi ghts on with passion and purpose.

His neighbours, the Bis-soondyal family of Adven-ture Village, Corentyne, know what he’s talking about, and themselves face trying days, because local government fails their com-munity.

Chandrawatie Dipnarine and her husband, Bisoon-dyal, married in 1958 with big dreams for their future, now mark their 30th year in the village.

Their six grown kids all work the land in the Coren-

BerbicePromise

failsHe articulates the

voice of the Guyanese people,

and echoes the heart of the nation

in

Being Berbice

stories and pix by Shaun Michael Samaroo

PEEVED RICE FARM-ER: In pix, Mahaise Ramjas, with his tractor at Adventure Village, Corentyne, Berbice

Turn to Page 4A

the minutes at a Council meeting. Thereafter, month after month, we would meet and the situation was never addressed or resolved. No action. You get fed-up and quit”.

Ramjas quit the Council and organized 150 farm-ers in a private consortium called the Central Coren-tyne Farmers Group, in 2007.

These farmers, ignoring the local government sys-tem and the newly installed IMC, sourced funding from a foreign funder, the Cana-da Hunger Fund, and each of the 150 member farmers received $180,000 worth of seed, pesticide and fertiliz-er. Ramjas scorns the way Central Government deals with his community. “The Minister of Local Govern-ment, Ganga Persaud, in-stalled the IMC in secret.

I was once a Councilor on the NDC that the IMC was replacing, and I was not in-vited to the installation of the IMC,” he said.

Ramjas said he feels the Party treated him with dis-dain and disrespect. “My father, one of the original family who bought the vil-lage of Adventure, worked on and helped build the home of Dr Cheddi Jagan. And this is what we get for that kind of loyalty. I told that to (former President Bharrat) Jagdeo once, and I asked him how we have to pay lease plus rates and tax-es for farmland. He prom-ised to look into the prob-lem, but so far no solution”.

He said he lost trust for the Party after his expe-rience serving at the lo-cal government council. “Frankly, right now, I doubt I would see local govern-

ment elections again. It has been so long. All promises, and nothing. I won’t trust them anymore. I was at a meeting in Georgetown last year, and stood up and said that to the audience, which included President Ra-motar and former President Jagdeo, and the diplomats, including the US Ambassa-dor and the Canadian and British High Commission-ers. None of the local lead-

ers responded. Only the Ca-nadian High Commissioner told me I hit the nail on the head,” Ramjas said.

He plants 45 acres, and laments his expenses, in-cluding having to drain ca-nals with his own capital. He built a steel pump, cost-ing $300,000, and it sits in his yard waiting for trans-port to the backlands.

“Government places no emphasis on agriculture

now. They focus on gold because that’s making money, and they leave us the farmers. We feel aban-doned,” he said.

Ramjas’ father, Bhoj Ramjas, bought land in the village in 1966, with the promise that prosperity would result. But the State fails to engage the farmers, with the Guyana Marketing Corporation, National Ag-ricultural Research Insti-

tute and other State agen-cies mandated to develop agriculture, all absent from his community.

Even the IMC, with its offi ce in the village of Kil-donan, seems distant and alien to Ramjas and his community.

Once housed at the Pat-terson Hall, a community centre funded with funds from the Social Impact Amelioration Programme (SIMAP), the IMC now operates from a derelict, di-lapidated, dismal shack that is falling apart.

It sits on a plot of land that a local resident donat-ed to the Council, and the building was knocked to-gether from used old wood that the Patterson Hall management gave to the Council. The old wood was dismantled garbage from renovations at the Patterson Hall.

Patterson Hall lies across from the derelict IMC building, with a sign out-side the gates and hut hous-ing a security guard an-nouncing to the world that the Guyana Elections Com-mission (GECOM) offi ce is situated there.

One resident, a re-mi-grant rice farmer who left New York to come home after the PPP/C won Gov-ernment in 1992, pointed out the irony. “If they cared about local government, would they do this? This is mind boggling. Here you have the local government offi ce housed in a shack, which is shameful and shocking, and across the street is GECOM, housed at the place where local government was, and look where they put the offi ce serving the people here”.

The resident refused to be named, expressing concern against “political victim-ization, which is terrible. I get favours from Party offi -cials, but it’s not enough. I plant rice, and they want to prevent farmers from dry-ing paddy on the roadway. They built a paddy fl oor for drying, but that’s eight miles away at Bengal Vil-lage. Which farmer would drive their tractor and trail-er with paddy all the way there? But I can’t criticize them openly, to the media. The backlash would be tre-mendous,” he said.

The man pointed out the roadway, which “BK International re-built with a State contract,” he said, noting that the re-built road is six feet narrower than the old roadway.

Turn to Page 6A

From Page 3Atyne, farming hundreds of acres of rice aback of their humble wooden house.

Their son, Seeram, clad in black swimming trunks, and bareback, sitting with his Mom in the open-air bottom-house of their house, lamented that he could not clear the main trench draining their rice farms, as someone stole the battery off the hy-mac that the Region Six administra-tion had dispatched for the work.

Instead of replacing the battery, the Regional of-fi cials trucked away the hy-mac, leaving residents feeling helpless. The morn-ing Stabroek News talked to the family, a village pos-se had petitioned the local IMC to get the Region to return a working hy-mac. Seeram said he listened to the promises of action, with skepticism.

“We suffer from drainage problems. My brother and me take care of the hy-mac, but since the battery got stolen, the Regional people moved it away. Now the ex-cess water affects our rice crop. The main farm access dam also needs repairs. We in a bad situation here, as harvesting will begin soon. The NDC does not work well,” Seeram said.

The family bought their land 30 years ago, becom-ing a part of the Adventure Village community.

Adventure Village used to belong to a family who operated it during colonial times as an estate. In the late 1960’s, 11 families, descended from Indian in-dentured labourers, formed a group and bought the estate, dividing the vast acreages of fl at, fertile land among themselves. These original 11 became propri-etors of the land, and to-day their descendants plant rice, rear cattle and culti-vate cash crops.

The Village promises much to its people, with its fertile fi elds, huge drainage canals, organized design and experienced farmers. The community became a part of a local government system spanning “six or eight villages”, one resi-dent said, along the Coren-tyne, including Adventure, Friendship, Kildonan and Bush Lot.

This local government system fails to deliver on those promises, residents say.

For example, the Ket-waru family, one of the original 11 who bought the

estate land and established rice and cattle farming over the past 47 years, now face a serious crisis, as the IMC moves to convert the main farm access dam into a res-idential street.

The IMC served le-gal notice on the family to dismantle a cattle pen, housing a hundred head of cattle that sits in front their house, to make way for the new street. A dozen new residential homes now exist aback of the Ketwaru farm-ing house, and the IMC

wants the street to allow these new residents vehicle access to their homes.

The situation is fast de-veloping into a legal bat-tle, as the Ketwaru family wonders why, after decades of operation, they now face such demanding disruption.

An offi cial at the IMC, who declined to be named in this report, said the dis-pute arises because the vil-lage grew, and now needs to house both a farm access dam for tractors and com-bines to access the hun-

dreds of acres of rice fi elds, and a street for the dozen newer residents living on house lots. The IMC, for reasons the offi cial could not explain, chose to erect the farm access dam and the residential street at the same spot.

Such confusing, baffl ing community management decisions fl ow out of the IMC, and residents feel frustration, and vent with verbal venom, but to no avail.

The IMC came into mysterious being after the elected Neighbourhood Democratic Council (NDC) collapsed, with most of its elected members from the last local government elec-tions in 1994 abandoning their posts in disgust, in-cluding Ramjas.

“Elections would make sure we get better treatment from local government offi -cials. Now the local council does not treat people well. It’s not functioning for us,” Dipnarine said.

The family pays rates and taxes on over a hundred acres of rice land, plus lease fees on many other acres it plants aback of the village. They lease extra land they need from the Region, at a cost of $1,000 per acre per year. “When we pay rates and taxes, the Council offi -cials tell us they lose our re-ceipts. They don’t have the records for our payments. We need local government elections to have our own people in there. When we contact government they don’t take any interest. We can’t complain to anyone cause no one taking care of anything,” Seeram said.

Rates and taxes for the average home in the village is a meager $389 a year, and residents acknowl-edged that this makes it hard for the Council to gather enough revenue to fi nance the local communi-ty development budget.

In fact, residents of Ad-venture Village come to-gether in informal coop-

eration, pool their money to meet their own budget, and hire workers to clean canals. Region Six offi cials lent the community the hy-mac, and supplied its fuel and an operator, but resi-dents pay the workers out of their own pocket.

Seeram’s brother, Suresh Bissoondyal, said he plants 100 acres rice, and “since the hy-mac gone, the canal is blocked again. The farm access dam is breaking up. When you cut the rice you can’t bring the paddy out. The Region promised to send the hy-mac again, but so far, it not here,” he said.

Ramjas, who served the council for six years after elections in 1994, “with no pay”, said “a PPP man came here and asked me to be the PPP councilor for the Bush Lot-Adventure NDC. So I served. But I had a bad experience. For example, we would get a report at the Council that someone dam-aged a road, and this report would be documented in

Page 4A STABROEK NEWS, Thursday, August 15, 2013 STABROEK NEWS, Thursday, August 15, 2013 Page 5A

INDUSTRIOUS YOUTH: Ryan Sukhoo works with ambition, and wants his village offi cials to play a serious role in developing his community HARD WORKING FARMER: Shair Rahamat wants the authorities to

provide a workable building and decent conditions for the operation of his local village council. Th e existing building at Kildonan Village is a shack.

Berbicians frustrated, as local governance crisis

erodes core of communities, causes

widespread social chaos, fuels angry discontent

In pic above, the Offi ce of the Local Government organ serving the people of Corentyne’s Bush Lot-Adventure community, comprising eight villages, hundreds of acres of rice land, cattle farming and cash crop, and thou-sands of Berbice residents. Th e shocking sight refl ects the state of local democracy in the country, with elections not held for 19 years.

From Page 5A “Why did they re-build

the road narrower? This would cause accident. It is sheer nonsense happening in this place,” the fuming Corentyne resident said.

He repeated the man-tra this newspaper heard: “Promises are comfort to fools. I stop vote. I vote for no party. This Party prom-ised to change the Burnham constitution, and never did. They benefi tting from the power it give them. Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon giv-ing excuse that Opposition cut Budget so they can’t develop. But development doesn’t come from Gov-ernment Budget. Develop-ment comes from private people getting the service of Government to build and grow. They think we stupid. But PPP losing Corentyne support. People just sit-ting waiting to go foreign, or to get remittances,” the former New York resident said.

He said he had no inter-est in the Party Congress held at Port Mourant two weeks ago. “No one here interested in them and they Congress,” he said, noting “they promise. All they do is promise, and nothing”.

He said “Guyana has a political problem, which escalates into an economic one”, and farmers and vil-lagers become victims of the political crisis.

That political crisis de-stroyed local government across the country, see-ing no elections for two decades, and continuing acrimony and strife at Par-liament and the Offi ce of the President as new laws come into play.

Local government elec-tions pave the way for local community development. After 28 years of rigged lo-cal and national elections, dating from the 1960’s to 1994, and 19 years of no election, the inner core, the heart and soul of local com-munities continue to rot.

Government responded to the crisis with the idea of disbanding the NDCs elect-ed in 1994, and replacing them with Interim Manage-ment Committees (IMC).

Stabroek News found these IMCs shrouded in mystery. This newspaper asked residents, former NDC members, and work-ers at IMC offi ces how IMC members were cho-sen. Everyone said they had no idea how members get chosen, though most people mention the name

of Local Government Min-ister Ganga Persaud as an integral offi cial, along with regional offi cials.

One IMC Chairman in Berbice said he got a call as a Party member and was asked if he was willing to serve. Similar stories show up elsewhere, including Essequibo. An informal survey of IMCs show that PPP party loyalists head up most or all of them.

IMC members serve for free as volunteers, and many members are aban-doning the Committees countrywide. The Chair-man receives a monthly stipend of $5,000, although this varies from place to place, with one Chairman receiving $4,000 a month.

Each IMC receives a State subsidy through the Ministry of Local Govern-ment of $3M a year.

The IMC that serves the Adventure – Bush Lot local community operates with a 2013 Budget of $5,160,647. Of that, the State subsidy of $3M goes to build bridges and roads.

The Region Six admin-istration pays workers for drainage and irrigation works. The IMC must col-lect rates and taxes to pay the two full time staff, and carry out Council business.

Sources say the two staff could be seen doing house to house collections every month, and this money, when enough is collected, goes to pay their salaries. Each earns around $35,000 a month.

The IMC operates out of its derelict shack at Kil-donan Village, with no run-ning water, no electricity, no washroom and no chairs for Committee members to hold their monthly meet-ings. The IMC abandoned such meetings, and only four IMC members, of the 16 that Minister of Local

Government Ganga Per-saud installed, remain ac-tive.

No one could say how the IMC members were selected, and the Minister was unavailable when this newspaper called him to fi nd out.

Two female staffers man the IMC every day, work-ing from 8 am to 3:30 pm. To use the washroom, they leave the offi ce to go to the houses of neighbours in the area.

The staff, about 10 work-ers, of the IMC serving the local community of Palmy-ra-No 2 Village-Cumber-land-Sheet Anchor in the Canje area are only now receiving their salary for 2012, sources say.

Sources at the Kildonan IMC said when a worker told a senior Government offi cial that the IMC offi ce doesn’t even have a wash-room for staff, the answer was “if your house ain’t good enough, you fi x it yourself”.

Chairman of the IMC at Kildonan, Chandra Singh, comes to the offi ce on a needs basis, or “to sign documents”, source said, and efforts by Stabroek News to secure a comment from him proved futile.

This newspaper passed by his house, situated at Friendship Village a cou-ple houses away from the home of his brother-in-law, Anurude Ramcharitar - the building contractor in the area who is contracted to construct Council projects – but could not contact him.

When a Stabroek News reporter visited the IMC offi ce, it rained intensely, and a staff member quickly shut the windows, made of old used wood, because the rain threatened the Council records, which lay open and unprotected. However, the roof leaked everywhere,

making it hard to fi nd room on the lone wood bench to sit on.

The IMC Overseer, Latchmie Ashadrat, refused to comment on the situa-tion, and referred all que-ries to the IMC Chairman, but could not say when he would be available at the offi ce.

A resident of the village, Shair Rahamat, 30, ex-pressed disgust at the state of the offi ce. A cash crop farmer, he came to com-plain of someone chopping a tree down and blocking the dam access to his farm.

Rahamat pointed to the decent looking bridge from the street over the trench that leads to the IMC of-fi ce building, and said “that bridge cost a million dollars, and we know who got the contract to build it. I am totally fed-up. I can’t understand this”.

Rahamat works hard, and invests his future in the land. The tragedy of local community governance shows up in his dismal out-look.

The crisis eats away at the future of young people investing in their commu-nities.

Rahamat and Ryan Suk-hoo, 22, a duck farmer of No 7 Village, refuse to al-low the crisis to beat them. Instead they fi ght back. While Rahamat lobbies the IMC and visits the offi ce at Kildonan often to register his displeasure in strong language, Sukhoo also re-fuses to remain silent. He had grown up under the system of no local govern-ment elections in Guyana, and today feels the impact

with deep-seated frustra-tion, a young Guyanese, of a new generation, suffering from a problem bedevil-ing his nation for decades, without progress.

Sukhoo drafted a petition in June and gathered doz-ens of signatures from his neighbours. He lobbied the Region Six administration. He wants the mud dam through which he lives to become a street, and to be paved.

His petition, attached to a letter to the Region Six Regional Chairman says that “with great concern about the living conditions of myself and family I am simply pleading for the lo-cal authority to assist my situation.

“I have made numer-ous complaints to the #19 NDC, where I was prom-ised by the Chairman to have some results… I am a simple Guyanese, trying to make a daily living. … due to the condition of the main roadway I have to use to get to work, I cannot ac-complish the simple objec-tive of getting to my job” without walking through mud, his letter to the Re-gional Chairman said. He also noted the anarchy that snares the road, as residents park tractors and heavy equipment with no regard for others.

Sukhoo works full time at a business in New Am-sterdam, and comes home in the evenings to work on his duck farm. He started with fi ve ducks, and now the farm has 580 ducks. He’s got a thriving busi-ness, and gradually works to build his parents a nice

house, and to furnish it with modern amenities.

Yet, when he steps out his gate, he steps into heavy mud, and when Stabroek News visited him, a narrow strip of old wood paved the way through the mud to his gate. “The local council is a complete waste of time, and I don’t even bother with them,” he said.

His efforts saw the Re-gional Chairman visit the dam, “and promised to get it repaired. So far, nothing”, he said, echoing the mantra of the farmers in Corentyne that “promises are comfort for fools”.

The IMC governing Palmyra to Cumberland, with a 2013 budget of over $20M, demonstrates Suk-hoo’s sentiments. Chances of raising the budget re-main slim, with the $3M subvention the only guar-anteed income. Now pay-ing its staff for November, 2012, the IMC remains mired in ineffi ciency and ineffectiveness, with most of the 18 members, teach-ers who fi nd it hard to take time off from school to at-tend Committee meetings, now abandoning it.

They repaired the dam that accesses the savannah where cattle and livestock feed, and for that they had to beg for donations of ma-terial from people building homes who had left over sand and stone.

Across the country, local communities silently sink, slowly erode, gradually break down. Lack of local government management, poor leadership, political gamesmanship, gnaw away at the heart of villages, towns and farms. The polit-ical quagmire surrounding local government sucks the life out of local communi-ties like a quicksand snar-ing its victim in silent, slow strangulation.

In Berbice, people keep hoping, believing the promise that the vast fertile savannahs, with fl owing canals and a richly lavish eco-system, would deliv-er the dreams of their fore parents, who invested their lives into the land.

Today, the little old shack at Kildonan Vil-lage, out of which the disorganized Interim Management Commit-tee operates, serving the Bush Lot-Adventure community, stands as a stark symbol, a graphic metaphor, a literal icon, of the collapse of the inner core of Guyanese commu-nities all across the land.

Page 6A STABROEK NEWS, Thursday, August 15, 2013

IMCs fail Corentyne, Canje

“I have made numerous complaints to

the #19 NDC, where I was promised by

the Chairman to have some results… I

am a simple Guyanese, trying to make a

daily living” - Ryan Sukhoo