MoAA’s PS has usurped the role of substantive village treasurer for a dismembered Santa Rosa Village Council

The Santa Rosa Village Council has received NO funds from the recent Carbon Credit Sale “dole out” form of developmental and benefit sharing model from the government of Guyana!! I will explain in the following paragraphs. I am of the Lokono Nation of coastal Guyana. I am a resident of Santa Rosa Village, the most populated Indigenous Peoples’ village in Guyana with approximately 10,000 residents.

Editor, I write to express my deep dissatisfaction with the way the governance of my village is undermined by the government of Guyana to the extent that the Minister of Amerindian Affairs, and more so, her Permanent Secretary, are directly handling bank accounts of all satellite areas of my village. Indeed, all of the villages and communities that receive funding from the Carbon Credit sales have the PS as a signatory to their bank accounts! By default, the PS has become the Village Treasurer for over 200 Indigenous Peoples villages and communities countrywide with no responsibility for reporting and accountability! Is this even proper? No village has given their express or written approval for this to happen. If this is not paternalistic and discriminatory, then I don’t know what is!!

Ever since the Presidential Grants, Amerindian Development Fund, LCDS and other funding mechanisms have been championed as developmental models for Guyana’s

Indigenous Peoples, we have had some sections of the village being favoured more than others because of their numbers and voting patterns and this has resulted in unequal allocation of such funds. This has resulted in a serious, and might I say, nearing calamitous undermining of the authority of the Santa Rosa Village Council as provided for in the Amerindian Act 2006. In fact, Santa Rosa Village now has 13 areas/ Satellites, each with their own management committee headed by a village councilor who operates in a manner devoid of oversight by the Santa Rosa Village Council. In effect the Santa Rosa Village Council has no say in the affairs in any of those 13 Areas of the village.

For Santa Rosa, this situation was perpetuated by the PPP/C government prior to 2015, continued by the APNU/AFC government in the preceding years and is again being facilitated by this current government. It has resulted in persons with partisan political ties to the last government and this current government to blatantly “eyepass” the Toshao and the Village Council of Santa Rosa at various times in the recent past. For context, the satellite areas of Santa Rosa are as follows:

1. Wallaba

2. Karaburi/Haimaruni

3. Kumaka

4. Moracupha

5. Huradiah/Acquero

6. Cabrora

7. Koko

8. Kaire and Islands

9. Santa Rosa and Islands

10. Parakese

11. Kamwatta

12. Kumaka

13. Rincon

Editor, these are areas that fall under the direct authority of the Santa Rosa Village Council. These are not separate villages. But they are being treated as such by the MoAA and given powers of a village council, with their own village stamp and to conduct business as any other village would. This is wrong! This is illegal! This needs to stop! In effect, Santa Rosa Village has 14 bank accounts but the substantive Village Treasurer doesn’t have access to any information on these accounts but, he the PS at the MOAA, does! Except the Santa Rosa Village Council bank account, which, I was told, was properly opened and kept in existence since the 1990s and for whom there are 3 signatories.

In conclusion, I am seeing projects and other activities happening all over my village and for this I am pleased. I am worried these are being done at the expense of rule of law and governance in my beloved homeland, facilitated by the government of Guyana, past and present, and their cronies (some of whom are my fellow residents and family).