…of oil funds
Well, at long last we’re getting some quantification of the long promised “oil money” that’s supposed to solve ALL our problems – if Trotman and this Government are to be believed. This was the money that was going to be “so much”, Trotman had announced he was going to ask Exxon for an “advance” to tide us over until the blessed day the money spigot would open up the financial floodgates for Guyana and immediately clear off our debt!! And we’d all live happily ever after!!
And now here it is!!!!…(prolonged drumroll please!!!)…Over the next THREE years, we’ll be raking in $380 million. Is that a stunned silence your Eyewitness is hearing? He understands…we don’t need much of a rake for that, do we?? It works out to (in Guyanese dollars) $127 million per year!! Just about US$0.6 million!! Not even US$1million.
Can you believe this? Well, your Eyewitness has been warning you, dear reader, all along…but he’s sure you wrote him off as just ranting. But here it is – right out of the horse’s mouth – and what say you now??
This isn’t even chicken feed, for goodness sake! GBTI just announced its DROP in profit last year – one year! – was $358 million!! And of course they didn’t even blink!! So where’s Trotman gonna get the US$500 million to build the “oil facility” on Crab Island by 2020? To put THIS spending in perspective, in Guyana dollars, that’s $100,000,000,000; or, in words, 100 billion dollars! Does Trotman plan on getting a loan on his “future income” from oil? And by which year will he be paying that off, pray tell??
And then, he and four other Ministers flew up to Texas…ooops!…sorry, they WERE FLOWN UP to Texas where they discussed bringing gas ashore from the Stabroek Field to fire a GPL Power Plant. Does he know the cost of even the gas lines to bring the gas ashore? Or the facility to convert the gas to liquefied petroleum gas (LPG)? Well he should look to Ghana, which took four years – and US$1billion – to complete their ATUABO GAS PLANT to use gas from their Jubilee Oil Field – literally a mirror image of ours!!
Whatever your Eyewitness said about getting US$500 million for the “oil facility”, double it for the gas facility. Then, since we can’t use all of the LPG, are we going to be selling off the rest – in a market that’s worse than the one for plunging oil?? They should ask T&T what THEY’RE doing with their LPG now that their biggest customer – the US, is afloat with their own!!
Does this fella Trotman LISTEN to himself?
…of Gov’t view of Indigenous peoples
In the midst of Guyana taking initiatives to help a people who’d been so egregiously exploited in past centuries under the UN-sponsored Decade for Peoples of African Origin, how can the Govt overlook the pattern of slighting Indigenous peoples – who were also exploited, and even subjected to genocide??
And it all has to do with land. We can start with the titling of their lands under a UNDP project being curtailed even before it was completed. Then there was Minister Keith Scott blurting out about Amerindians being “greedy” for wanting the letter of the law on lands be followed.
Then, of course, was the arbitrary inclusion of Amerindian land rights in the mandate of the Land Commission of Inquiry into African ancestral lands.
And now we hear of a Minister “explaining” he arbitrarily inserted himself on the National Toshaos Council (NTC) – without their agreement – because cricket’s “important” to him. And he had to look at cricket the night before!!
Now Amerindians know where they stand on the totem pole!!
…on Reparations
Now, isn’t this gratuitous – not to mention “self-serving” – advice? The British High Commissioner said, “Reparation’s not the way forward”.
Africans should look to the future – even though crippled by the past!
