Back on the Track

But for its first and only Premier, Communist Cheddi Jagan, British Guiana could now be far along the road to a stable economy and peaceful self-government. As far back as 1945, Britain earmarked $10 million for the country's long-term development. But in early 1954, when it came time to draw up new requests for aid from Britain, the colony's first try at self-government had blown up in the ouster of Jagan. In the political confusion left behind by the Commonwealth's first Communist Premier, no one ever got around to applying for Guiana's share of the colonial development funds. A stopgap grant of $14 million was made later that year, but it was no substitute for long-range financial assistance. Not until last week was British Guiana back on the track again.

Meeting in London with the colony's Governor Sir Patrick Muir Renison, Britain's Colonial Secretary Alan Lennox-Boyd agreed to a new plan that would pour about $58,240,000 into social and economic development in the next five years. The specific points covered by the plan included completion of the 130,000-acre Boerasirie irrigation and drainage project, rebuilding the main road along the seacoast from the Surinam border to Georgetown through rich sugar-and rice-growing areas, completion of a 4,000-unit housing scheme, and rural electrification. More than half the cash for the program will be provided by long-term loans from British financiers and the World Bank. Most of the remaining funds will come from the British government, in direct grants and interest-free loans. The rest will come from British Guiana itself.

Left unanswered was the question that has been dangling ever since Jagan's removal from office and the suspension of the colony's constitution: When will self-government be reestablished? The likely answer: when the flow of development funds has put an end to the ragged poverty, the mud-hut living standards and widespread unemployment that combined to bring Communist Jagan to power in the first place.

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