Iguana posted:
b. Infrastructure - we inherited an almost perfect infrastructure from the British. Today, the sea defenses are collapsing and residents are flooded. The trenches and dams are a disaster. Poor sanitation is now accepted and trash all over. Today the land of many waters relies on bottled water. The power system is broken for over 40 years. Yes, 40+ years of blackouts that our local geniuses (Freddy take note) CANNOT solve. Our attempts to improve infrastructure resulted in a giant goady bridge and a road to nowhere. All of the aforementioned has a direct effect on quality of life.
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I dont know how old you are but we did NOT inherit a good infrastructure under the British. Between 1964 and 1970 the main focus was on building infrastructure. Rural electrification, rural water, building SURFACED roads, and improved drainage and irrigation. This is because outside of the towns and the estates there was not much of it.
We had frequent blackouts in the early 1960s. The vast majority of Guyanese did NOT have access to indoor plumbing. Most Guyanese used kerosene lamps, including many even in GT. Note that in that era even middle class people used relatively little electricity so that if the electric grid couldn't cope imagine how bad it was.
Yes in GT we were sheltered to some degree as many of the Bookers gentry lived there.
BOOKERS Guiana was set up to benefit Bookers and the infrastructure that existed was for Bookers. Do you know that the best stretch of the road to the airport was the last stretch and that was because the Americans controlled? The rest was a narrow pot holed trail, and the ECD no better.
I would never want to go back to those days when someone would look at me and tell me that all I should aspire to be is to be a civil servant or a teacher. Maybe you think that this is quality of life.
The British were like the type of parent who told their kids that they are dunces, capable of nothing, and therefore should aspire to nothing. They were also adept at building that poison pill which has hampered Guyana, and that is the ethnic insecurity which bedevils us up to this day.
Divide and rule is how they were able to run the world's largest empire. Keep the natives fighting each other and they would never rebel against colonial rule. And Guyana wasn't unique. The religious problems of India/Pakistan, the ethnic conflict of Nigeria and Kenya, and the skin color issues of Jamaica are all do to mischievous acts of the British.