Guyana’s aviation history is not a relic to be admired—it is a roadmap we are failing to follow.
From its humble beginnings in 1939, when British Guiana Airways stitched together isolated riverine communities with amphibious aircraft, aviation in Guyana was never a luxury. It was a necessity. It connected the hinterland to the coast, enabled medical access, supported commerce, and ultimately became a pillar of national development. By the time Guyana Airways emerged as the national flag carrier in 1966, it was more than an airline—it was a declaration of sovereignty, capability, and ambition.
Today, we boast of having one of the most modern and rapidly expanding airports in the Caribbean and Latin America. But that boast rings hollow. An airport without a national airline is infrastructure without strategy.
The story of Guyana Airways proves that state-supported aviation is not only viable but essential in a country defined by geography, resource expansion, and uneven development. For decades, the airline connected interior communities like Lethem, Mabaruma, and Kamarang—areas that remain economically critical today, particularly as Guyana’s oil wealth and extractive industries push deeper into the hinterland. Market forces now demand—not discourage—the return of a national carrier. Guyana is no longer a small, struggling economy. It is one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. Passenger traffic is rising. Business travel is surging. Diaspora links to New York, Toronto, and the Caribbean are stronger than ever.
Tourism is expanding. Cargo demand—particularly for energy, agriculture, and mining—is increasing. Yet, we remain dependent on foreign carriers to move our people, control our pricing, and dictate our connectivity. That is not a position of strength. It is a structural vulnerability. Critics will point to the collapse of Guyana Airways in 1999 as a cautionary tale. They are not wrong—but they are incomplete. The airline failed under a very different economic reality: high debt, weak management structures, and a limited market.
None of those conditions define Guyana today. What failed then was not the concept of a national airline—it was its execution. Modern aviation models offer alternatives that did not exist in the 1990s: public-private partnerships, strategic alliances, code-sharing agreements, and lean fleet operations. A reimagined national carrier does not have to replicate the past. It must be built for the future—efficient, commercially driven, and strategically aligned with national development goals.
The question is no longer whether Guyana can afford a national airline. The question is whether we can afford not to have one.
Without a national carrier, Guyana forfeits control over critical aspects of its economic expansion—airlift capacity, route development, pricing competitiveness, and emergency response capability. We risk becoming a transit point rather than a hub, a customer rather than a competitor.
A country positioning itself as a regional energy powerhouse cannot outsource its aviation backbone indefinitely. Reinstating a national airline is not about nostalgia. It is about sovereignty, economic leverage, and strategic foresight. It is about ensuring that the same spirit that once used amphibious aircraft to reach remote communities now drives a modern aviation enterprise capable of connecting Guyana to global markets on its own terms.
We have the demand. We have the infrastructure. We have the economic momentum.
What we need now is the political will.
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Beneath the rhetoric lies a familiar reality—public losses, private gains, and political survival
There is a dangerous and intellectually dishonest narrative taking root in Guyana—one that seeks to chain the survival of a failing, state-subsidised sugar industry to the success of a highly profitable private rum company.
Prime Minister Mark Phillips’ claim that Guyana “cannot produce world-class rum without sustaining sugar production” is not only misleading—it is a calculated deflection from the real issue: decades of unchecked public spending on an industry that has consistently failed to justify its cost. Let us deal in facts, not sentiment.
GuySuCo has absorbed tens of billions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies over the past three decades. Year after year, it has failed to produce sugar at a cost competitive with global prices. It remains structurally inefficient, operationally challenged, and financially dependent on the Treasury for survival.
In stark contrast stands Demerara Distillers Limited (DDL)—a private, profit-making corporation that has successfully repositioned itself in the global premium rum market. It has done what efficient enterprises do: adapt, innovate, and grow. But here is the contradiction the Prime Minister refuses to confront. If DDL’s success truly depends on sugar, then why is the Guyanese taxpayer being asked to subsidize that dependency? Why is a private company’s supply chain risk being transferred onto the public balance sheet?
Serious businesses do not operate this way. They secure their inputs. They invest in their supply chains. They acquire or partner where necessary to ensure stability and control. If molasses is as indispensable as the government claims, then DDL should be at the forefront of acquiring, restructuring, or directly investing in sugar production. That is what vertical integration looks like. That is what responsibility looks like. Anything less is a quiet but deliberate socialization of cost and privatization of profit.
And the question that exposes the fragility of the Prime Minister’s argument is this: what happens when the subsidies stop? If a future administration—faced with mounting fiscal pressures or shifting priorities—decides it can no longer justify injecting billions into GuySuCo, does DDL cease operations? Or does it simply source molasses from the international market, as any rational business would? The answer is obvious—and it dismantles the entire premise.
Which brings us to the uncomfortable truth at the heart of this policy posture: this is not economics. This is politics. The continued subsidization of sugar has long functioned as an electoral instrument—preserving jobs in key constituencies, sustaining rural economic dependencies, and maintaining a support base that is politically valuable. In that context, the invocation of rum is not an economic argument; it is a convenient narrative, designed to make an unsustainable policy appear strategically necessary.
A political necessity is being dressed up as an economic imperative.
Yes, sugar is part of Guyana’s history. Yes, rum is part of its identity. But history cannot be financed indefinitely by taxpayers, and identity cannot be used to obscure fiscal irresponsibility.
If the government believes sugar has a future, it must present a transparent, time-bound plan for viability, with measurable outcomes and accountability. If it does not, then it must stop constructing artificial linkages to justify its continued existence. Guyanese are not blind to this contradiction. They are being asked, year after year, to fund losses they do not control, for benefits that are politically distributed but economically unsound.
Guyana cannot build a modern economy on this foundation. It is not strategy. It is subsidy without end, sustained by political convenience and disguised as national pride—and it is time that fiction is called out for what it is.
The question is no longer whether rum depends on sugar. The question is why the Guyanese taxpayer is being asked to carry a burden that private enterprise itself is unwilling to assume.
When an unelected REO does the work of elected Regional officials, it is not governance — it is the PPP’s velvet-gloved coup against democracy in Region 10.
The photographs tell a story that no government press release will ever dare to tell. A newly appointed Regional Executive Officer — an unelected civil servant, a political appointee who has never once placed his name before the people of Region 10 — is pictured tramping through communities, consulting with residents, inspecting drains, and conducting field visits. On the surface, it looks like diligence. Look closer, and it is something far more sinister.
That is the work of the Regional Chairman and Vice-Chairman. It is constitutionally mandated, democratically earned work — belonging to the elected representatives of the We Invest in Nationhood (WIN) party, who won the Regional Democratic Council of Region 10 fair and square at the 2025 local government elections. The people of Linden and its surrounding communities spoke. They chose their representatives. And the PPP-led government, apparently allergic to the democratic verdict wherever it does not favour them, has decided those representatives simply will not function.
The REO Is Not a Chairman. The Constitution Says So. Let us be unambiguous about what a Regional Executive Officer is, and what he is not. The REO is the Accounting Officer of the Regional Democratic Council. He is an administrator — appointed, not elected — tasked with managing the financial and administrative machinery of the RDC. His role is to serve the Regional Chairman and the democratically constituted Regional Administration. He is a functionary. He is not a policymaker. He is certainly not a substitute Chairman.
The Regional Democratic Council is a creature of the Constitution of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana. Chapter 7, Article 72 of that Constitution establishes Local Democratic Organs as part of the architecture of participatory governance in this country. The elected Chairman and Vice-Chairman derive their authority directly from the people. No President, no Minister of Local Government, and no hand-picked REO can lawfully strip them of that authority — not without tearing pages from the very Constitution the PPP government swore to uphold. What is happening in Region 10 is precisely that — a tearing of pages.
Victimization Dressed in a High-Visibility Vest The PPP’s strategy is not new. It has been deployed before, against other regions, against other opposition-controlled councils. Where they cannot win at the ballot box, they strangle through administration. Resources are withheld. Statutory allocations are delayed. And when all else fails, they empower the REO — their man, their appointee — to simply do the job of the elected officials, rendering the Chairman and Vice-Chairman ceremonial figureheads with titles but no territory.
This is victimization. Not the kind that is loud and obvious — no one is being arrested, no office has been padlocked.
This is the creeping, bureaucratic, suffocating kind of victimization that is designed to frustrate, to humiliate, and ultimately to delegitimize a duly elected Regional Administration in the eyes of its own constituents. If residents see the REO in the field addressing their concerns while their Chairman is nowhere to be found — not because he refuses to serve, but because he is being systematically locked out of the tools and authority needed to serve — what conclusion are they meant to draw? That is the calculation. That is the intention.
The Government Cannot Have It Both Ways This administration speaks endlessly of constitutional governance. President Ali invokes the rule of law at every press conference and international forum. Ministers lecture the opposition about respecting state institutions. Yet here, in Region 10, a constitutional body — the Regional Democratic Council — is being functionally neutered by the very government that claims to be democracy’s guardian.
You cannot celebrate the Constitution on Independence Day and desecrate it on every other day of the year. You cannot demand that opposition parties respect electoral outcomes nationally while engineering the collapse of those same outcomes at the regional level. The hypocrisy is not merely breathtaking — it is dangerous. It tells every Guyanese citizen who does not carry a PPP membership card that their vote has a ceiling, that democracy in this country is conditional, and that the Constitution is a document of convenience rather than a covenant of governance.
Region 10 Deserves Better. Guyana Deserves Better. The 592 Guardian calls on the Minister of Local Government and Regional Development to immediately cease and desist from any directive — formal or informal — that empowers the REO of Region 10 to usurp the functions constitutionally belonging to the elected Regional Chairman and Vice-Chairman.
We call on the Integrity Commission and the relevant oversight bodies to investigate whether the conduct of the REO, and those who have directed him, constitutes a breach of the constitutional order.
We call on civil society, the Bar Association of Guyana, and all defenders of democratic governance to speak with one voice: what is happening in Region 10 is not administration. It is occupation.
And we say to the people of Region 10 — your vote was not wasted. Your mandate was real. The attempt to erase it is the clearest possible evidence that those in power fear what you represent: an independent, determined electorate that will not be bought, bullied, or bypassed.
That is a power no REO, however willing, can ever take from you.
https://592guardian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/img_9918-300x150.png00Editorhttps://592guardian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/img_9918-300x150.pngEditor2026-05-22 08:47:292026-05-22 08:47:29A Servant of the State Has Become an Instrument of Suppression
Guyana exports the grain and imports the flour. It harvests the oil and outsources the refinery of ambition. This nation has been haemorrhaging economic value and political accountability for generations — and the time to stop the bleeding is not tomorrow. It is now.
Walk into any supermarket in Georgetown today and you will find it on the shelf: four pounds of rice flour, imported from India, priced at approximately US$9.00 — nearly two thousand Guyanese dollars — for a product derived from a crop this country grows in abundance. Let that sit for a moment. Guyana, one of the Caribbean’s foremost rice producers, is paying a foreign nation to mill its own grain and ship it back. This is not a quirk of the market. It is a monument to our collective failure.
That failure did not arrive overnight. Its roots reach back to the Burnham era, when initiatives to process rice into value-added goods — flour, bran, starch — were derailed not by any shortage of raw material or industrial capacity, but by political weaponisation of public fear. Opposition voices of the time warned that rice flour consumption would cause “beri beri” or “white mouth.” Whether born of genuine misunderstanding or naked expediency, those narratives found purchase. Public confidence in domestic production collapsed. And with it, the ambition to build an agro-industrial economy worthy of this nation’s resources.
“A nation cannot keep blaming its past while its present leaders reproduce the same pattern of squandered opportunity and deflected accountability.”
But we will not let old political ghosts carry all the blame. The deeper failure was institutional. Policy was inconsistent. Technological investment was inadequate. Processing infrastructure was neglected. And there was no long-term strategy to develop domestic markets for domestically transformed goods. Skepticism thrives where competence is absent — and competence requires sustained political will, not just good intentions at a ribbon-cutting ceremony.
US$9.00
PER 4 LBS OF IMPORTED RICE FLOUR — A PRODUCT GUYANA GROWS BUT DOES NOT MILL
At current retail prices in Georgetown supermarkets. Guyana remains dependent on Indian processors for value-added rice products while exporting raw paddy at fraction of the price.
The result is a textbook case of value-chain dependency: raw commodity out, finished product back in — at a premium. Every bag of imported rice flour is a quiet indictment. It tells us that decades after independence, after nationalisation, after oil discovery, after billions in revenue projections, we still have not built the systems to transform what we grow into what we need. We are, in the language of development economics, trapped at the bottom of the value chain — not by fate, but by choice. By negligence. By a failure of governance that has never been adequately named, let alone corrected.
ON ACCOUNTABILITY
And this brings us to the harder truth. The rice flour scandal — and we will call it what it is — does not exist in isolation. It is a symptom of a governance culture in which leaders are never truly required to answer for what they leave undone. Decisions with generational consequences are made, or unmade, without explanation. Opportunities are buried. And the public is expected to accept, to move on, to wait for the next election cycle as though that alone constitutes democratic accountability.
It does not. Accountability is not a quadrennial event. It is a daily obligation. It is transparency in decision-making. It is the willingness to stand before the people — not with press releases and photo-opportunities — but with honest reckoning about what has failed and why. It is the courage to say: we got this wrong, here is how we will fix it, and here is the timeline on which you may hold us to that promise.
Power is not built on comfort. It is built on responsibility, on pressure, on the unrelenting demand to do better. A leader who cannot face scrutiny has no business holding authority.
Guyana stands today at a genuinely historic inflection point. Oil revenues have changed the arithmetic of what is possible. The world is watching. Investment is flowing. And yet the old patterns persist: raw potential exported, finished value imported, questions deflected, failures absorbed quietly by a population conditioned to expect disappointment from those who govern them. That conditioning is itself a form of political damage — and reversing it requires citizens who refuse to be quiet.
We are not calling for rancour. We are calling for standards. We are calling for servant leadership — leaders who understand that public office is a mandate issued in trust, not a throne claimed by election. Leaders who measure their tenure not by the infrastructure they announce but by the lives they materially improve. Leaders who welcome scrutiny as the legitimate exercise of democratic sovereignty, not as an affront to their authority.
The question for this new era of Guyanese prosperity is therefore not simply whether the country will build a rice flour mill — though it should, and urgently. The question is whether Guyana will build a governance culture equal to its resources. Whether it will create institutions capable of converting potential into transformation. Whether it will hold those in power to a standard commensurate with the trust placed in them.
Wealth without accountability is not development. It is an accelerant for inequality, entrenched dysfunction, and the deepening cynicism of a people who have seen too many promises evaporate.
Our Demand
The time for quiet acceptance has passed. It passed long ago — with every bag of imported rice flour, with every missed processing opportunity, with every year that the country’s agricultural inheritance was left unrefined and undervalued. Citizens who remain silent in the face of repeated, documented failure do not escape its consequences. They inherit them. And they pass them on.
So we say this plainly: public servants exist to serve the public — not the reverse. Their mandate is not self-perpetuation. It is transformation. And transformation demands that they be challenged, pressed, questioned, and if necessary, replaced by those with the competence and the courage to do what the moment requires.
“Guyana does not need louder promises. It needs leaders who are held — and hold themselves — to account. Servant leadership is not a slogan. It is a standard. And we will accept nothing less.”
https://i0.wp.com/592guardian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/img_0023-1-5.png?fit=1374%2C768&ssl=17681374Editorhttps://592guardian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/img_9918-300x150.pngEditor2026-05-22 08:36:442026-05-22 08:36:44We Are Selling Rice.We Are Buying Back
Three years ago on May 21st nineteen children died in a school dormitory that had padlocked grilles over its windows and doors and no fire extinguishers, no sand buckets, no meaningful safety measures of any kind. The building did not fail on its own. It failed because the state that built it, funded it, and bore responsibility for the children sleeping inside it never ensured the most basic conditions for their survival. That is not an allegation. That is a fact established in every legal filing now before the courts.
What followed was, if anything, worse. In the acute grief of July 2023, while parents were still burying their children, a delegation of government officials descended on Mahdia. Among them was the Attorney General, Anil Nandlall. Among them also — and this fact demands to be stated plainly — was an individual named Keoma Griffith, presented to the bereaved families as counsel. He was not their counsel. He had arrived with the State.
WHAT THE PARENTS WERE TOLD
“Sign this agreement or you have nothing else to get from the government.” — State officials to bereaved parents, as reported in sworn accounts before the courts “They told us not to discuss the details of the agreement with anyone. We didn’t get any legal advice.” — A parent of one of the nineteen victims, as reported by Stabroek News “I feel guilty, like I sold my child’s life for 5 million.” — A mother, on the $5 million settlement signed without independent legal advice
The Attorney General told at least one parent that the government could not be sued because it did not light the fire. What he did not explain — and what the families were in no position to interrogate, having just buried children — was that liability does not require lighting a match. It requires a duty of care. And the state’s duty to those children in that dormitory could not have been clearer or more thoroughly abandoned.
The agreements the parents were pressed to sign contained a clause absolving the government of liability. Parents were explicitly told not to share the details. No independent attorney was in that room to advise them. And yet the agreements were signed — because grief, powerlessness, and the explicit threat of receiving nothing at all are extraordinarily effective instruments of coercion.
ESTABLISHED FACTS → Nineteen children died in the Mahdia dormitory fire on May 21, 2023. → The facility had padlocked, grilled windows and doors with no emergency egress. → No fire extinguishers or sand buckets were present on the premises. → In July 2023, parents signed $5M-per-child agreements without independent legal counsel. → Agreements included clauses absolving the government of liability. → Parents were told not to discuss the agreement’s terms with anyone. → The individual presented as families’ “counsel,” Keoma Griffith, travelled with the State delegation — not independently of it. → Keoma Griffith was subsequently appointed Minister of Labour and Manpower Planning. → A High Court has since set aside one such agreement, signed under duress, clearing the way for independent judicial valuation. → Claims filed on behalf of 11 families now exceed $400 million per child.
THE REWARD FOR SERVICES RENDERED Keoma Griffith was not a prominent political figure before July 2023. He was present at that meeting in Mahdia in a capacity that, to the grieving parents, appeared to be legal representation. He was not representing them. He was present with — and on the side of — the government whose liability was the very subject of the agreements being signed. That is not the role of independent counsel. That is the role of a State facilitator. That same Keoma Griffith has since been elevated to the Cabinet as Minister of Labour and Manpower Planning. He now stands at the intersection of protest, workers’ rights, and state authority — and he is, at this very moment, doing what he has apparently been hired to do: serving the government’s interests over those of the people who needed protection. The Mahdia families needed protection in July 2023. Workers need protection today. The pattern is consistent.
WHERE THINGS STAND NOW ▸ May 21, 2023 — Nineteen children die in the Mahdia dormitory fire. The facility had no functioning fire safety measures and exits were obstructed. ▸ July 3, 2023 — AG Nandlall, Keoma Griffith, and other officials visit Mahdia. Parents are told to sign $5M agreements or “have nothing.” No independent legal counsel is present. Agreements contain liability waivers. Parents are told not to discuss the terms.
Copy of the contract — families were forced to sign
2024–2025 — Attorneys Darren Wade and Eusi Anderson file legal challenges. Wade represents 11 families from Micobie and Chenapau, with claims exceeding $400M per child. Anderson secures a High Court ruling setting aside one coerced agreement. ▸ May 2025 — International psychiatric experts evaluate survivors to document ongoing trauma. Families report the government has abandoned pledges to build memorials and secure burial grounds.
The High Court’s decision to set aside the agreement signed by Valerie Carter — whose twin daughters perished — is not just a legal development. It is a judicial acknowledgment that what happened in that room in Mahdia was not a fair settlement. It was a transaction conducted under duress, facilitated by a government that used grief, desperation, and the threat of destitution to close out its liability for nineteen dead children.
The State has also failed to compensate survivors who carry physical injuries and severe psychological trauma. It has not built the memorials it promised. It has not secured the burial grounds it pledged. These are not oversights. They are the predictable behaviour of an administration that, from the very night of the fire, has treated accountability as a threat to be managed rather than an obligation to be met.
The families who refused to be silenced deserve to be acknowledged clearly on this anniversary. The High Court ruling that cracked the wall the government built around its own liability, and the $400 million-per-child claims that refuse to reduce a child’s life to an administrative line item, are not merely legal proceedings. They are acts of resistance against a pattern of state impunity.
Nineteen children should be alive today. They are not, because a government facility failed them in every way a facility can fail. The administration’s response — dispatching officials to seal the grief of parents before it could become litigation, and then rewarding the facilitator of that operation with a Cabinet seat — is its own indictment. The courts are now writing a different ending. And this publication will be watching every word of it.
https://i0.wp.com/592guardian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/img_0141-9.png?fit=1374%2C768&ssl=17681374Editorhttps://592guardian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/img_9918-300x150.pngEditor2026-05-22 08:29:412026-05-22 08:29:41THEY BOUGHT SILENCE FOR $5 MILLION. NOW THE COURTS ARE LISTENING.
There is a number that should embarrass every official in the Office of the President, every technocrat in the Ministry of Finance, and every parliamentarian who has stood at a podium boasting of Guyana’s miraculous economic ascent.
That number is $1.66.
That is Guyana’s minimum wage — in US dollars per hour — as reflected in a regional comparison chart published by the Caribbean Election Centre. It places Guyana second from the bottom among all CARICOM territories, above only Suriname and the broken state of Haiti, and far below small island economies like Grenada, Saint Lucia, and Belize, nations with no oil, no gas, and no trillion-dollar offshore reserves to their names.
Read that again. Belize — with mangoes and tourism — pays its workers more per hour than Guyana, the country that the International Monetary Fund has just confirmed recorded the highest real GDP growth rate in the world, averaging 47 percent per year since 2022.
The paradox is not subtle. It is grotesque.
The Numbers Don’t Lie — They Accuse. Guyana’s economic transformation is advancing strongly and broadening in scale. Rapidly expanding oil production, strong non-oil output, and large-scale public infrastructure investment supported the highest real GDP growth rate in the world, averaging 47 percent per year since 2022. Real oil GDP increased by nearly 58 percent in 2024, while real non-oil GDP expanded over 13 percent.
The country’s sovereign wealth vehicle, the Natural Resource Fund, is bursting. The NRF received GYD 536 billion — approximately $2.57 billion USD — in oil revenue in 2024 alone, and is projected to exceed $3.2 billion by end of 2025. Production capacity, driven by ExxonMobil’s Stabroek Block operations, is projected to reach approximately 1.3 million barrels per day by the end of 2027.
These are not the statistics of a struggling developing nation. These are the statistics of a petrostate in full ascent — a country that, from 2020 to 2023, grew its oil production by 425 percent, making it a key contributor to global crude oil supply growth, with GDP per capita rising from below the global average to well above it.
And yet, the worker who wakes before dawn to open a shop, drive a minibus, stock a shelf, or tend a field is guaranteed, by law, the equivalent of less than two American dollars for every hour of their labour.
The Service Economy Comparison: A Study in Shame What makes Guyana’s position in the CARICOM wage table uniquely indefensible — as opposed to merely unfortunate — is the context of its neighbours.
The territories that outrank Guyana in minimum wage are predominantly service-dependent economies. They have no oil. They have no gold. They have no bauxite. They live and die by the fortunes of tourism, offshore financial services, and seasonal agriculture. Bermuda at $17.13 is a British Overseas Territory whose economy rests almost entirely on insurance and reinsurance. Barbados at $5.36 earns its foreign exchange from hotel rooms and rum. Even St Kitts and Nevis, a twin-island nation with a combined population smaller than Georgetown, mandates a minimum wage of $4.63 per hour.
These are economies that have squeezed every competitive advantage from sunshine, sand, and service. They have no resource windfall to draw from — and yet they have found the political will to pay their workers more than Guyana does.
There is no economic justification for this. There is only a political explanation.
Oil Wealth Has Not Trickled Down — It Has Been Withheld. The government has a rehearsed response to wage concerns. Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo has pointed, with some regularity, to infrastructure spending, cash grants, and aggregate public sector wage growth as evidence that oil revenues are reaching the people. The macro numbers, however, tell a different story at the level of the individual worker.
The government-authorised minimum wage for the private sector, which dates back to 2022, is GY$60,147 — a figure that sits below the GY$100,000 income tax threshold. Simultaneously, unofficial estimates suggest that at least 40 percent of public servants take home salaries of GY$140,000 and less after income tax and NIS deductions.
The cost of living has not been similarly frozen. Estimates put the monthly budget needed by a single mother and her kindergarten-age child at more than GY$140,000 — more than double what the law requires a private sector employer to pay. Cost of living in Georgetown significantly exceeds the minimum wage — estimates suggest a single adult needs at least GYD 148,824 per month for basic needs.
The Guyana Public Service Union has been unambiguous about the gap. The GPSU called for a minimum salary of GY$221,000, shortly after agreeing with the government to a 2024 minimum salary of GY$94,765 — not taxable, but with NIS deductions applied. The union settled. The workers absorbed the shortfall.
Meanwhile, 48 percent of the population continues to live on less than USD$5.50 a day, placing Guyana among the highest poverty rates in Latin America and the Caribbean — even as the IMF praises its macroeconomic performance in the same breath.
The Resource Curse in Real Time. Economists have long warned of the “resource curse” — the paradox by which nations rich in natural wealth fail to translate that wealth into broad-based prosperity. The mechanisms are well understood: revenues flow to central government and connected elites; the non-extractive private sector stagnates; wages lag because political will to legislate otherwise is absent; inequality deepens even as headline GDP soars.
While oil revenues boost the national economy, they often fail to directly benefit the average citizen. Large-scale infrastructure projects and government operations funded by these revenues disproportionately benefit elites and international contractors. As a result, ordinary Guyanese often see little immediate impact on their daily lives, fostering frustration and skepticism about the oil boom.
Guyana is not immune to this pattern. It is, in many respects, exhibiting it in textbook fashion.
Sustained prosperity requires saving for the future, strengthening transparency, controlling inflation, and diversifying beyond oil — so advises even the IMF. But before Guyana can diversify, before it can build a human capital base capable of sustaining a post-oil economy, it must first ensure that the people doing the work of nation-building can afford to eat.
What Must Change The minimum wage is not merely an economic instrument. It is a moral statement about what a society believes its workers are worth. For a country extracting billions in petroleum revenue, a minimum wage of $1.66 per hour is not a reflection of economic limitation. It is a reflection of political priority.
The government must immediately: Raise the national minimum wage to a rate that reflects both the cost of living in Guyana’s urban centres and the nation’s demonstrated fiscal capacity. A floor of GYD $150,000 per month for the private sector — still short of a genuine living wage — would at minimum acknowledge the reality that working Guyanese face daily.
Unify the public and private sector floors. The current two-tier system, in which private sector workers earn less protection than public servants, creates a structural underclass in the economy’s most dynamic sectors.
Index the minimum wage to inflation and oil revenue milestones, so that workers automatically share in the country’s resource wealth rather than waiting on the political calendar.
Strengthen enforcement. A minimum wage that exists on paper but is honoured inconsistently, particularly in the retail, domestic work, and agricultural sectors, is no minimum wage at all.
The Verdict Guyana does not have the economy of a country that should rank second-last in its own region on worker compensation. It has the economy of a country that should be leading that table — or at minimum, setting a regional standard worthy of its extraordinary fortune.
The $1.66 figure is not a data point. It is a verdict on governance.
It is what happens when oil wealth is treated as the property of the state and its contractors rather than the inheritance of the people who live above it.
The world’s fastest-growing economy should not have the region’s second-lowest minimum wage. These two facts cannot coexist indefinitely without political consequence. The question is not whether Guyanese workers deserve better.
The question is how much longer they will be made to wait.
The 592 Guardian is an independent commentary platform focused on accountability, civic integrity, and the voices of everyday Guyanese.
https://i0.wp.com/592guardian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/img_0020-12.png?fit=1374%2C768&ssl=17681374Editorhttps://592guardian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/img_9918-300x150.pngEditor2026-05-22 08:10:472026-05-22 08:22:02The $1.66 Indictment: How the World’s Fastest-Growing Economy Abandoned Its Workers
Guyana’s Parliament continues to project a troubling contradiction: while the institution at home is visibly weakened, underperforming, and increasingly irrelevant to the public it is supposed to serve, its senior figures continue to seek prestige abroad in forums that reward democratic symbolism more than democratic substance.
The presence of Deputy Speaker Dr. Vishwa Mahadeo at the 74th Meeting of the ParlAmericas Council and the 22nd Plenary Assembly in Ottawa may be presented as an act of parliamentary diplomacy, but it also invites a harder question: what exactly is being exported under the banner of “regional engagement” when the domestic legislature remains marred by dysfunction, inertia, and a persistent failure to command respect? A parliament that does not properly deliberate, scrutinize, or hold the executive to account cannot credibly posture as a model of democratic practice on the international stage.
This is not an argument against Guyana’s participation in hemispheric parliamentary bodies. It is an argument against the hypocrisy of sending representatives to speak the language of governance, transparency, and institutional strengthening while the home institution continues to atrophy.
If ParlAmericas is genuinely committed to democratic renewal, then it must do more than host ceremonial gatherings and issue polished declarations. It must also reckon with the reality that participation alone does not equal performance, and membership alone does not confer credibility.
Guyana’s parliamentary leadership should understand that international visibility is not a substitute for domestic responsibility. A deputy speaker cannot represent parliamentary excellence abroad if the parliament itself is widely seen as an appendage of the executive, a chamber too often reduced to formality, and a place where accountability is diluted by political convenience. The more these officials travel to forums on governance while failing to uphold governance at home, the more they expose the hollowness of their commitments.
There is also a larger institutional problem here. Bodies like ParlAmericas risk damaging their own moral authority when they allow weak parliamentary systems to bask in the legitimacy of association without demanding visible standards of conduct and performance.
Cooperation should not become cover. Dialogue should not become applause. And multilateral fellowship should not become a laundering mechanism for domestic failure.
If Guyana’s parliament is to recover any serious standing, its leaders must first show seriousness where it matters most: in the National Assembly, before the people of Guyana, through disciplined scrutiny, real debate, and uncompromising accountability. Until then, every foreign forum becomes another stage on which local dysfunction is repackaged as democratic participation.
https://i0.wp.com/592guardian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/img_0023-11.png?fit=1374%2C768&ssl=17681374Editorhttps://592guardian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/img_9918-300x150.pngEditor2026-05-22 08:04:172026-05-22 08:04:17Hypocrisy on the Hemispheric Stage
While Guyana’s Deputy Speaker participates in the ParlAmericas gathering in Ottawa—a forum dedicated to strengthening parliamentary democracy, transparency, and inter-legislative cooperation—the National Assembly of Guyana has not convened for over ninety days. There have been no sittings since early in the year. No questions to Ministers. No motions debated. No committee activity of consequence placed before the public.
This is not a scheduling anomaly. It is a democratic lapse.
Under Guyana’s constitutional architecture, Parliament is the central forum for executive accountability. Article 65 establishes it as the supreme legislative authority, while the system of standing committees—most notably the Public Accounts Committee (PAC)—exists to ensure that public funds are examined, interrogated, and justified. Yet oversight cannot occur in abstraction. It requires sittings, reports, and active engagement. Without these, accountability is not delayed—it is denied.
The timing could not be more consequential. Guyana is now managing billions in oil revenues through the Natural Resource Fund, alongside expanding capital expenditure across multiple sectors. These are precisely the conditions that demand heightened parliamentary vigilance. Instead, what obtains is institutional quiet. The Public Accounts Committee, chaired by the Opposition and traditionally one of the few bipartisan accountability mechanisms in the system, depends on the steady flow of Auditor General reports and parliamentary engagement to function effectively. In the absence of sittings and structured follow-through, its work risks becoming episodic rather than systemic. Oversight, in such circumstances, becomes performative rather than substantive.
Equally concerning is the absence of parliamentary questions and debates—tools through which Ministers are compelled to explain policy decisions, defend expenditures, and clarify national priorities. These are not optional features of governance; they are its backbone. When they disappear from public life for extended periods, so too does transparency.
Against this backdrop, the optics of international participation take on a different character. What does it mean to speak about democratic strengthening abroad while presiding over democratic dormancy at home? What credibility does representation carry when the institution being represented is not actively functioning?
Responsibility here is neither vague nor collective. The convening of Parliament is governed by established procedures and ultimately driven by the Executive’s legislative agenda. Prolonged inactivity therefore raises legitimate questions: Is this delay strategic? Administrative? Political? The public has been given no clear explanation—and in governance, unexplained gaps are rarely benign.
This is not merely about optics or political point-scoring. It is about the integrity of the State’s accountability framework at a moment of unprecedented national wealth. Democracies do not fail overnight; they weaken through normalization of absence—of sittings not held, questions not asked, and scrutiny not applied. Guyana cannot afford that trajectory.
If Parliament is to retain its constitutional relevance, it must do more than exist—it must function. Regularly. Transparently. Relentlessly. Anything less, particularly at this juncture, is not just institutional failure. It is a quiet surrender of oversight at the very moment it is most needed.
https://i0.wp.com/592guardian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/img_0023-1-4.png?fit=1374%2C768&ssl=17681374Editorhttps://592guardian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/img_9918-300x150.pngEditor2026-05-21 10:21:272026-05-21 10:21:27Diplomacy Abroad, Dereliction at Home
Georgetown, Guyana – Newly released financial statements from Hess Guyana Exploration Limited have confirmed that Guyana effectively forfeited approximately US$1 billion in taxes in 2025 alone under the terms of the 2016 Petroleum Agreement—an arrangement that continues to spark outrage over its disproportionate benefits to foreign oil companies.
Hess, which holds a 30% stake in the prolific Stabroek Block alongside ExxonMobil (45%) and CNOOC (25%), reported after-tax profits of approximately US$3 billion for 2025. However, the company’s financial disclosures reveal an income tax expense of GY$201.8 billion (approximately US$1 billion)—taxes that were not paid by the company, but instead waived by the Government of Guyana under the controversial agreement.
This single-year tax waiver is nearly equivalent to Guyana’s entire infrastructure budget for 2025, which stood at GY$209 billion.
Even more alarming is the comparison with national oil revenues. While Hess alone benefited from US$1 billion in waived taxes, Guyana received just US$2.5 billion in total profits and royalties combined. Royalty payments amounted to a mere US$330.6 million, according to the Bank of Guyana’s Natural Resource Fund report—meaning the country surrendered three times more in taxes to one company than it earned in royalties from all production.
Chartered accountant and attorney Christopher Ram has condemned the arrangement, arguing that Guyanese taxpayers are effectively subsidizing some of the most profitable oil operations globally. Under Article 15 of the 2016 Petroleum Agreement, ExxonMobil and its co-venturers are exempt from corporation tax, VAT, excise duties, and other fiscal obligations. Instead, the Government of Guyana is required to pay these taxes on their behalf and issue certificates declaring that the companies have satisfied their tax obligations.
These certificates can then be used in their home jurisdictions to avoid further taxation. Ram describes this mechanism as a “legal fiction” that enables the transfer of billions of dollars abroad virtually tax-free, while ordinary Guyanese citizens and businesses remain fully subject to the country’s tax regime.
Further analysis indicates that the exemptions extend beyond corporate taxes. The agreement also eliminates withholding taxes on profit remittances, a standard fiscal tool applied to all other entities operating in Guyana. Ram estimates that had these provisions been applied, Guyana could have collected an additional GY$409 billion in 2025 alone. The financial disclosures from Hess provide rare, concrete evidence of the scale of revenue foregone under the current petroleum framework. With financial statements from ExxonMobil and CNOOC still pending, the full extent of the fiscal concessions granted to the Stabroek Block partners remains unknown.
What is clear, however, is that Guyana continues to lose billions annually under a deal that places extraordinary fiscal burdens on its citizens while granting sweeping exemptions to foreign oil companies.
The question that now confronts policymakers and the public alike is whether this arrangement can continue to stand in the face of mounting evidence that the country is receiving less than it is giving away.
https://i0.wp.com/592guardian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/img_0023-9.png?fit=1374%2C768&ssl=17681374Editorhttps://592guardian.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/06/img_9918-300x150.pngEditor2026-05-21 09:53:192026-05-21 09:59:55US$1B TAX GIVEAWAY TO HESS EXPOSED: FINANCIALS REVEAL STAGGERING LOSS TO GUYANA
President Irfaan Ali says he is “not playing politics with potholes.” It is a neat line—clean, memorable, and designed to reassure.
But governance is not theatre. And the reality unfolding in Georgetown tells a more complicated story.
The decision to unilaterally assume control of more than 50 city roads is not just about fixing infrastructure. It is about power—how it is exercised, how it is expanded, and how easily it can blur the line between public service and political strategy.
Let us not pretend otherwise.
No one disputes that Georgetown’s roads need urgent attention. Citizens have endured years of neglect, and any effort to improve infrastructure should, in principle, be welcomed. But good governance is not defined by outcomes alone—it is defined by process, legitimacy, and respect for institutions.
And this is where the administration falters.
Political authority is not earned by wresting control of municipal assets under the banner of efficiency. That is not leadership. That is the use of central power to override local
governance—because it is convenient, because it is expedient, and perhaps, because it is politically advantageous.
Because every time central government sidesteps or diminishes a locally elected body, it sends a message: that the voice of the people at that level can be bypassed when it becomes inconvenient.
That is a dangerous precedent.
If the administration believes the City Council is incapable of managing Georgetown, then there is a democratic remedy readily available—return to the people.
Anything less risks being seen not as governance, but as encroachment.
And while the President speaks of long-term planning and integrated transport systems, the immediate reality is far more visible: freshly paved roads that will, inevitably, be credited to central government. Optics matter in politics, and infrastructure is among the most powerful political tools any administration can wield.
Which is precisely why this moment demands scrutiny.
True transformation lies in confronting the structural inequities that continue to define everyday life for many Guyanese—stagnant wages, gaps in healthcare, uneven access to quality education, and the unresolved question of whether the country’s oil wealth is being maximized for its people.
These are not as visible as asphalt. They do not deliver immediate political dividends. But they are the measures by which leadership is ultimately judged.
The risk here is not that Georgetown’s roads are being repaired. The risk is that the method chosen undermines the very democratic principles that give governance its legitimacy.
Power, if it is to be respected, must also be restrained.
President Ali insists this is not politics.
But when control is expanded without consent, when institutions are bypassed rather than strengthened, and when visibility aligns so neatly with political advantage, the public is entitled—indeed obligated—to question that claim.
Yours truly will continue to defend not just development, but the democratic framework within which it must occur.
No amount of administrative maneuvering can substitute for democratic legitimacy. The People’s Progressive Party/Civic may assume control of streets, expand its administrative reach, and reshape the operational map of Georgetown—but it cannot rewrite the political reality that has defined the city for decades.
Because political power, in any democracy worthy of the name, is not secured through the gradual absorption of authority. It is earned—openly, competitively, and decisively—at the ballot box.
What is unfolding now risks creating a distinction the public will not ignore: control without consent.
Yes, roads may be paved. Yes, projects may be completed. Yes, visibility may increase. But none of these amount to validation. None of these confer the moral or political authority that only the electorate can grant.
If anything, they sharpen the contrast.
Because when a government exercises power in spaces it has historically failed to win, without first returning to the people for a mandate, the question is unavoidable: is this governance—or is this substitution?
The answer will not be found in infrastructure.
It will be found in whether the administration is willing to subject its ambitions in Georgetown to the only test that truly matters—free, fair, and fully contested elections.
Editor’s Note: This article was first published in March 2026. These streets were unilaterally taken from the City under the guise of development. Two months later, the true motives behind these actions have become evident.
