The African Cultural and Development Association (ACDA) is the latest organisation that is blasting the government for its planned importation of 500 nurses from Bangladesh. The organisation in a release says this is a blatantly planned act of provocation against Guyanese nurses and the African community. African-Guyanese are the majority in the public health deva services.
According to ACDA, it seems that the PPP/C government with its need to pursue the winner- take- all anti- human rights governance is creating a disastrous internal security and destabilising situation in Guyana. The importation of the South Asian nurses is akin to the indentureship plan of 1838, where the indentured workers were offered better working conditions (pay for work done, housing, passage back to place of origin if requested, the right to citizenship and the vote after 2 years), the organisation charged. “It follows that the mainly African nurses on the breadline shall out of necessity exercise the option to leave Guyana.”
Making known the government’s plan is insidious ACDA states it began with the closure of the Linden Nursing school which contributed to the shortage of nurses, coupled with the refusal of the PPP Government to provide a liveable wage for the nurses thereby forcing them to seek greener pastures overseas. The Government using the shortage of nurses after these deliberate acts to cull the numbers of local nurses, then offering the South Asian nurses better wages and opportunities over local nurses retches of provocation, gross disrespect and racism against Guyanese nurses, the cultural organisation announced. This is a view shared many who questioned the Government’s plan.
Guyana is a member of CARICOM; CARICOM citizens, including Haiti should be included in any labour Program that is due to a “shortage” of Guyanese Labour ACDA proposes. “Why not Cubans? Guyana has had a long history with health workers from Cuba. Currently Cuban doctors take years to become citizens why the urgency with the granting of citizenship to South Asians so quickly, clearly something sinister and mischievous is afoot in this selective process.”
Pointing out that in Quatar, which has the same worker and population needs like Guyana, a foreign person can only work if they have a work and resident permit and these workers may become eligible for Qatari citizenship if they have resided there for 25 years and have demonstrated good conduct and behaviour. In Guayana the Bangladeshi nurses would be able to vote after a year of residency and get citizenship status after five years.
Quatar has a population of 2;3 million of which 313,000 are Qataris and 2 million are expatriates and foreign workers that cannot vote. What is the haste here in Guyana to take away the rights of Guyanese to decide on the direction of their country without foreign workers input, ACDA questions. “This as an unprecedented act of betrayal of the Guyanese people.”
In the meantime, Guyanese are suffering from inflation and diminished buying power. Importing foreign workers and paying them higher wages and benefits than Guyanese people will further undermine Guyanese’s future earning power.
ACDA demands that the PPPC’s reverse their racial trajectory of adding to the nation’s voting population for their own personal racial benefit and begin to invest in our youth and villages. As well as through their partnerships begin to provide the necessary training that would make Guyanese workers more eligible to work in this oil driven economy, concludes the organisation.