Renuka Singh
The Public Diplomacy office at Guyana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has confirmed that former United National Congress minister Ganga Singh is now employed “by the Government of Guyana as Director of Trade, Investment and Agriculture”.
The former minister of the Environment has also confirmed to Guardian Media that he is now attached to the Guyanese office in Port-of-Spain.
Singh’s quiet appointment has triggered some racial crosstalk within the Guyanese government.
He did not respond to follow up questions about the appointment or the racial talk that it inspired.
President of the CGID, Rikford Burk is contending that the “racist” PPP removed an African-Guyanese from the local Guyanese Consulate in order to appoint Singh.
He is also accusing the PPP of creating the post in order to facilitate payback to Singh for work he did for them during the 2020 General Elections in Guyana.
While the Guyanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs did not speak to Singh’s appointment, they did respond to Burk and condemned the inherent racism in his allegations. The Guyanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that “any fair and objective assessment of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation’s ethnic composition of senior, mid-level and junior diplomats will show that the ministry consists of a predominantly Afro Guyanese make-up”.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs addressed the racial make-up but not Burk’s concerns about Singh’s appointment.
“This reality has persisted throughout successive administrations. In 2021, the Ministry posted 16 mid-level and junior diplomats to our overseas missions - 15 of whom are Afro Guyanese, 1 being an Indo Guyanese,” the Ministry said.
Burk said that the PPP was “funding UNC politician in Trinidad and Tobago with millions of Guyanese tax dollars”.
Burk said that the Guyanese Government was “bankrolling a UNC politician as payback for ethnic, political loyalty. This is a criminal fleecing of Guyanese taxpayers to advance a corrupt, political and ethnic axis between the PPP and UNC”.
Burk said that during the 2020 elections in Guyana, Singh came to the nation to help campaign “for the racist PPP”.
“Now, in a corrupt payback scheme, the PPP government is secretly pumping Guyanese taxpayers dollars into Ganga Singh’s bank accounts,” Burk said.
“The PPP government has removed the African Guyanese Consul General in Trinidad and Tobago, and has hired Ganga Singh to perform the Consul General duties under the guise of a bogus appointment as Director of Trade, Investment and Agricultural at the Guyana Consulate in Port of Spain,” he said.
Burk said that under the arrangement, Singh will “report directly to the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, like Ambassadors”.
“Most outrageously, the PPP regime is paying Ganga Singh over USD $10,000.00 a month, over $2 million Guyana dollars,” he said.
Burk is now calling for an investigation into the appointment and has called on the Government of T&T and the Guyanese Special Organised Crime Unit to determine whether the payments being routed through Washington and then to a bank in Guyana are tax evasion.
“The CGID calls on the government of Trinidad and Tobago, the Special Organised Crime Unit of the Guyana Police Force and the Auditor General of Guyana, to investigate this matter to determine if any tax evasion or money laundering laws are being violated by these alleged transactions,” he said.
The racial accusations also continued with Burk said that the PPP would “ never have paid an African Guyanese career Foreign Service Officer a monthly salary of over USD $10,000.00. Never!”.
He also claimed that the position was “fake” and created to facilitate the payback to Singh.
“Singh, who as a citizen of Trinidad and Tobago, is ineligible to be accredited as a diplomat in Trinidad,” Burk said.
“Obviously, this clumsy, unethical, and most likely, illegal, shenanigan is a direct circumvention of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations,” Burk said.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Guyana accused Burk of being “reckless and disingenuous” in his accusations based on race and said that Burke selectively singled out two “exceptionally qualified Individuals of Indian descent, in a bid to fuel his selfish ambitions and partisan outfit”.
“His actions are tantamount to one who is racist and divisive,” the ministry said.
“Guyanese of all races and demographic will not countenance the false and misleading narrative from a character such as Burke. In fact, it is obvious that Guyanese across the diaspora feel very sickened by the vile and obnoxious behaviour of Burke who purports to parade as a black progressive leader. It is clear that Burke abuses the freedoms provided in a mature democratic society in a destructive deterritorialized imaginary manner,” the Ministry said.
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UNC: nothing to do with us
Locally, when asked about Singh’s appointment, the UNC said that Singh was no longer “an active member of the UNC in any of our party organs”.
“We cannot confirm any such allegations,” the party PRO Kirk Meighoo said and directed questions back to Singh.
“This, frankly, has nothing to do with the UNC,” Meighoo said.