Dear Editor,
My December 2, 2025 visit to the Parika Sea Dam left me shaken, not only by the desperation in which families are forced to live, but by the staggering contrast between their reality and the massive development unfolding behind their homes. As Guyana advances a US$4.5 billion port project along the Parika foreshore, the residents who have lived there for decades continue to survive without the most basic human necessities.
In one of the most gut-wrenching testimonies I have ever heard, a man explained that after 38 years on the Sea Dam, the first time he used a flush toilet, had running water, or experienced electricity was when he went to jail. Generations have grown up here without a road, without potable water, without drainage, without electricity other than the few solar panels residents have purchased on their own. Children wade through floodwater during spring tides, families speak of raising children in houses that shake whenever excavators pass, and families depend on rainwater or river water to survive.
Yet rising just beyond their homes is a multi-billion-dollar port development, a symbol of national ambition that stands in stark and painful contrast to the forgotten lives in its shadow. How can Guyana boast of mega-projects while communities literally metres away lack what every human being should have: clean water, sanitation, light, safety, and dignity?
Residents repeatedly told me that the Ministry of Housing visited a while ago, marked homes for relocation, and promised that they would return with information on where families would be resettled. Not one follow-up meeting has occurred. Some residents have been applying for house lots since 2014 with no update. Others had their homes demolished without consultation, compensation, or even a relocation plan. These families built the Sea Dam with their own hands, reclaiming land from the river with stone, iron, and debris over decades, yet today they face uncertainty and fear, not partnership.
This is not how an oil-producing nation treating its people with dignity behaves. And it is not how development should proceed in any country, let alone one withdrawing $1 billion per day from its Natural Resource Fund.
If the government intends to relocate the families of Parika Sea Dam, it must be done with fairness, consultation, written guarantees, and a commitment to better living conditions. Not one family should be pushed aside to make room for a US$4.5B project while still unsure where they will sleep next month. Development must not widen inequality. It must lift every Guyanese, starting with those who have waited the longest and endured the most.