By Raffique Shah
October 23, 2024

It was with a degree of shock, certainly disappointment, I noted that many of my fellow Trinis appear to be envious of our Guyanese brethren over the one-off payment President Irfaan Ali promised them by year-end.

I wasn’t aware initially of the multi-billion Guyana dollars payout until it was brought to my attention by one of the Guyanese living in my village. Once the details circulated, I did some checking to see precisely what was on offer. It was GUY$100,000 per citizen, once the recipient was age 18 years or more. Some rough calculations told me that, based on current exchange rates: GUY$210 equals US$1 and it takes TT$6.77 to equal US$1. Each recipient will therefore receive US$475.10 come January 2025. The estimated number of persons entitled to the grant is 500,000.

So, President Ali will have kept a promise of sharing the oil dollars with the citizenry with a bumper, one-off payment of US$250 million. He can afford it. In 2023, oil-rich Guyana was harvesting up to 323,000 barrels of oil per day, bringing in around US$1 billion in revenue.

The Guyanese people, in spite of their bountiful resources, have long struggled to reap benefits from the country’s many minerals. Guyanese have, in fact, had a very hard time over many decades. Trinis who claim to have had it even harder know little or nothing of the 1950s murderous race wars in what we called “The Mudlands”. They know even less about the colonial masters from Britain jailing leading politicians in Guyana after dismissing elected governments. The British jailed Dr Cheddi Jagan and his top aides on at least three occasions as they dissolved the legally elected government.

I should let readers note that Trinidad and Tobago, also a British colony at the time, was used as the staging post for British naval and amphibious sources that went into Guyana. Not all of the British soldiers were “Dogs of War” commonplace in that era of decolonisation. My drill instructor at Sandhurst, Sgt Matthews of the Coldstream Guards, an amiable gentleman (yes, I mean amiable), gave me some touching stories of how he and his colleagues helped the near-starving Guyanese who got caught up in the decolonisation crossfire.

After the British government learned how to keep Jagan and men like Eusi Kwayana out of office and how to re-invent Forbes Burnham as a gentle tyrant, all Guyana meant to them was bauxite, gold and several other valuable minerals.

To cut my long rant on the evils of colonisation short, I was happy whenever something positive turned up in the news about that country. I made some very good friends there, visited on a few occasions, so when crude oil was discovered in large quantities in Guyana’s territory, I was even happier. That discovery offered Trinidad and Tobago a “second wind”, in a manner of speaking.

Our crude oil production had dropped to almost under 50,000 barrels a day and natural gas is now the mainstay of our industrialisation. Maybe new opportunities abound for these two countries that have so much in common. But there was always an undercurrent that I never quite understood, that had nationals looking at each other suspiciously.

Some weeks ago, I wrote a column in which I praised President Ali. Thus far, he had lived up to my expectation, cutting his own path as a leader. I was pleasantly surprised when he announced this payout based on a promise he had made to let the Guyanese people enjoy some of the wealth that their huge oil deposits bring today.

Indeed, based on projections, they will continue to be one of the largest daily crude oil producers in the world. While there are threats hanging over the use of hydrocarbons in fuels in the world, I am convinced that their oil and ours will survive as contributors to our respective economies well beyond 2050. Global warming must remain a focus for countries just as ours.

We are both dependent on commodities that are said to give a warming effect on our climate. We in T&T being a small island state will suffer more from the ill-effects of global warming, but cutting production at any of our oil and downstream produce will not help save the world.

Guyana is particular because of its sheer size; its forest reserves will certainly be a good buffer in fighting these ill-effects. The recent flooding which affected huge swathes of the mudland is a good reminder that they must focus on reducing the dangers of greenhouse gases. Meanwhile, we must not begrudge the Guyanese people the benefits they enjoy from their hydrocarbon finds.

We must bear in mind that successive governments in T&T have doled out hundreds of billions of TT dollars by way of grants, subsidies, free education, benefits, training and…need I go on? Before you envy, think of what you squandered.