HGP Nightly News – The Opposition APNU has levelled a sweeping indictment against the Government, alleging that Guyana’s booming natural resources are being systematically plundered through corruption, mismanagement and a culture of favouritism that is leaving ordinary citizens with almost nothing to show for the wealth sitting beneath their own feet.
APNU Member of Parliament Juretha Fernandes pulled no punches in naming what she believes is driving the problem. “The motive is corruption, so that their friends, family, and favorites can obtain wealth at the expense of the Guyanese residents,” she said flatly, painting a picture of a government that has turned its back on the very people it was elected to serve. The situation in hinterland and mining communities, she argued, is not accidental, it is the direct result of deliberate choices made to benefit a privileged few while interior residents are left behind.
Her allegations did not stop there. Fernandes went further, pointing to what she described as the unchecked presence of foreign operators stripping Guyana’s resources with little consequence. “We have foreign companies and foreigners coming into Guyana and basically taking all of our resources while the people of Guyana are left with the bare minimum,” she said. And in perhaps her most startling claim of the press conference, she alleged that the haemorrhage of Guyana’s wealth is happening in real time, every single day. “Resources are being stolen; gold is being smuggled every single day out of this country,” she declared, a charge that, if true, points to a catastrophic failure of oversight at the highest levels.
Fellow APNU MP Dr. Dexter Todd approached the crisis from a different angle but arrived at the same damning conclusion. Guyana, he argued, does not have a revenue problem. It has a governance problem. “The challenge then is not revenue, but capacity to deliver development to the people where it matters most,” he said, adding that the ruling PPPC “has consistently failed in this regard.” Like Fernandes, Todd took direct aim at what he described as a patronage-driven system, one where the administration’s loyalty lies firmly with its inner circle of friends, families and favourites, while the broader Guyanese population watches the country’s growing wealth pass them by.
Together, the two MPs framed a picture of a nation rich in resources but poor in accountability, a nation where the gap between what Guyana earns and what its citizens actually experience grows wider by the day. The opposition’s warning was clear: without serious reforms to improve transparency, strengthen oversight and ensure that resource wealth is shared equitably, public trust will continue to collapse. Fernandes summed up the bitter irony of it all in one searing line, in their own country, on their own land, sitting atop their own resources, Guyanese have been reduced to “tenants in our own land.”
