There are so many issues that confront the ordinary person that sometimes it is difficult to focus on any one thing. These days one has to worry about those who were asked to join the breadline because of their political support.
And this is happening although the President says that he is fashioning a Guyana where all will benefit regardless of political affiliation.
Perhaps sending home these workers, some of them low level, is part of the fashioning process, although it is not clear.
During his election campaign, Irfaan Ali did promise to create 50,000 new jobs. On one occasion he was asked where he would find 50,000 people unless he was looking for labourers and other menial workers.
But even then he had to find these people.
Suddenly it dawned on people that Irfaan was working to employ 50,000 people. He was going to fire those who were employed, then re-employ them among the crowd that he proposes to create jobs for.
Some of the 50,000 will be absorbed by the sugar industry. Guyana, under the coalition government, took the bull by the horns and opted to reduce the losses created by the Guyana Sugar Corporation. It closed three of the major loss-making estates.
Skeldon, the estate that Bharrat Jagdeo rebuilt for US$200 million, never got off the ground. The coalition never needed to close that estate.
Irfaan Ali said that he is re-opening the sugar estates. Their operation is not going to be dependent on whether they make money. It is going to be a case of a parent supporting a drug-addicted child for how long it takes.
The child does not need to go out to work or to bring in any income. The love of the parent is all that is needed. Unfortunately, the cost of maintaining that child will impact the other children and family members.
There will be less money to go around. At times food will be short; but people would be asked to show love.
Guyana has always been different. Many, years ago the world began to recognize that the sweet had gone out of sugar. In short, there was no money in sugar.
Cuba was the largest sugar-producing nation in this region. Pretty soon, it could not find enough markets. Russia was a major buyer but even then the demand began to decline.
St Kitts produced sugar to the extent that it often recruited labourers from Guyana. Barbados relied on Guyana to the extent that the sugar boilers were all recruited from Guyana. Jamaica and Trinidad increasingly let the cane fields go idle. There was nothing to be had from sugar.
But Guyana insisted because it was more a political issue than an economic issue. Time will tell how long this parent would continue to provide for its drug-addicted child.
There are other things happening. There are the arrests of some people who were involved in the March 2 elections. What started initially as private criminal charges have blown up into police action.
No one is sure how this came about. Some people don’t want to believe that the state is using the police to prop up the private charges.
One of the people embroiled in this issue is the Chief Elections Officer. When last people checked, he was still on the job. Someone whispered to me that some people wanted him sacked like those public servants. They are still angry that they cannot touch Keith Lowenfield.
In spite of that, many are looking to the government in the same way small hungry birds look to their parents.
Someone once said to me that nature is all around, even among us human beings. The small birds would be in the nest and when the mother returns they would all open their beaks for her to push the food in.
Perhaps the mother recognizes who got the last time around; perhaps she keeps feeding the greediest.
Sometimes she is outsmarted. There is the cuckoo that lays her egg into the nest built by another bird. The chick is bigger than the others so when it hatches it pushes the smaller ones out of the nest.
In this way the competition for the food is drastically reduced. There are many cuckoos among us.
So one comes to the promised $25,000 for each household. There are many hungry birds, all with their mouths open. Mothers have a way of liking some more than others so don’t be upset if you hear some people getting $25,000 in cash and $25,000 in hampers.
But then there are the cuckoos. These will get when some wouldn’t and there is no one to whom the affected can complain.
They will simply push people aside, sometimes to the point of hiding them.
