Poverty in Guyana

Dear Editor,

I am Mohamed Zafar, a 65-year-old Ontarian barrister, former resident of De Willem, Demerara, and a man whose conscience will no longer permit silence on this issue. I write to you about poverty: not as an abstract statistic, but as a living, breathing crisis unfolding right now in the heartland of our beloved Guyana.

My spouse is in Corriverton today, attending her mother’s funeral. Amid her grief, she has been moved to call me — not to speak of loss alone, but to bear witness to something that shook her deeply: the scale of abject poverty, which she is seeing across the Corentyne. Families without enough. Children without enough. Futures, quietly extinguished.

This is not a political abstraction. This is happening to our people.

Approximately 19% of Guyanese live in poverty — nearly one in five of our brothers and sisters teetering on the edge of survival. While government expenditure flows toward projects that are neither urgent nor essential to our nation’s foundational growth, the poor are being left behind. Our rural planners must reckon with this moral failure and redirect priorities accordingly. I offer four urgent, actionable imperatives:

• Every poor Guyanese family must be granted a minimum of 10 acres of land, free of charge, so they may pursue agricultural livelihoods with dignity. Land is power. Land is food. Land is sovereignty. This must be accompanied by accessible loan systems, technical support, and the complete dismantling of every bureaucratic barrier that stands between a poor family and their ability to farm and flourish.
• Poor Guyanese households need no less than a 20% increase in effective income — and Guyana need not reinvent the wheel. Canada’s federal government has just introduced a quarterly Grocery Rebate commencing May 2026, providing approximately $475 CAD per eligible recipient to directly support lower-income Canadians. This initiative has already reached 2 million Canadians and is a model of targeted, dignified social support. I urge Guyana’s policymakers to study this programme seriously and implement a comparable initiative by July 2026. Our poor deserve no less than what compassionate governance can offer.
• The children of poor Guyanese must not inherit poverty simply because the State failed them at the starting line. Education and healthcare for these children must be elevated to the highest priority within the relevant Ministries — not as charity, but as a constitutional and moral obligation. Every child deserves to walk into a classroom and a clinic, regardless of the income of their parents.
• I speak from experience here. When I was in Fourth Form at QC, at age 14, our headmaster, Mr. Clarence Trotz, encouraged me to form a Gardeners’ Society. He gave me land within the school compound. With nothing more than time and seedlings, we grew a garden that fed the wider community freely. That experience taught me something I have never forgotten: empowerment does not always require enormous capital — it requires vision, trust, and the removal of obstacles. If you doubt the power of community agriculture, look no further than Vietnam’s extraordinary transformation through grassroots farming — proof, at a national scale, that this works.

Those of us who have the means and the platform must bear responsibility for those who do not. This is not charity — it is justice. I have personally transitioned from military service to law, and throughout that journey I have maintained deep admiration for individuals like Azruddin Mohamed, Hana Khamelia, and Nazar Mohamed — people who have dedicated themselves tirelessly to uplifting the lives of the poor. Their example must inspire us all.

Editor, what Guyana’s poor need now is urgent, courageous, and unflinching action. Land. Income. Education. Health. These are not luxuries — they are the minimum conditions for a dignified human life.

I call on every policymaker, every community leader, and every Guyanese who reads these words: let us not look away.