According to a Guyana Information Agency press release issued on Tuesday, President Enrique Cardoso of Brazil and Acting President Samuel Hinds discussed the possibilities of Guyana becoming a "port area" for Brazil, when the neighbouring head of state made a stop-over at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport.

The Government is racing ahead of itself. The Takutu bridge is currently under construction, and it seems as if the Guyana-Brazil road is looming on the not-very-distant horizon. Yet still the administration has not taken the steps which are necessary to maintain the country's sovereignty, protect the environment and ensure the security of interior inhabitants before we are linked irrevocably with the great South American hinterland.

We are a population of less than one million people. We have borders which we apparently cannot monitor at the present time, let alone when the major artery to Brazil goes through. Despite a much-touted registration exercise for Brazilian miners, we still do not know how many garimpeiros are working in the interior. At the end of December, less than 400 had registered, and nothing has been heard of the exercise since then. There have been security issues too, involving drugs, the firing on a police post, and the hijacking of an aircraft in Lethem; security will be a source of even greater concern once the road is completed, and multiply that a hundred times over if there is a port as well.

We also do not know how much revenue this country is losing as a consequence of corrupt practices in the mining industry, some of which we reported on at Kurupung last July. Subsequent improvements were made there, but it is very much a moot point as to whether the GGMC currently has the manpower and resources to carry out its mandate in the interior mining locations.

It has not gone unreported either that we are not in control of the environmental situation. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) does not have the resources, human or financial, to enable it to function effectively at the moment. When 20 dredges were closed down in the Upper Mazaruni last year because of the turbidity of the water, this was not done on account of any monitoring programme on the part of the agency; it occurred incidentally following a visit of the Prime Minister to the area. Only then was the EPA and the Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) asked to investigate. In the meantime there are ongoing complaints from some villagers in the hinterland about the effect mining is having on their water supply and quality of life. These issues are simply not being addressed in any systematic way.

There is, too, the Iwokrama reserve, which is bisected by the road - hardly an ideal arrangement for an ecological zone. Clearly some work would need to be done on the environmental impact of the road on the reserve, before the Government decides to move ahead further.

Then there is the question of Amerindian land issues. Minister of Amerindian Affairs Carolyn Rodrigues was reported as saying recently that the Government position is that demarcation of current lands must be done before the question of additional land allocation will be addressed. This is tantamount to saying that the administration has no intention of increasing the present land quota for the indigenous peoples. After all, it makes no sense to go to the expense of a cadastral survey for existing holdings if the intention is to expand them in the near future.

Surely the land issue should be settled before the changes which the road will bring in its wake are upon us.

The Government has been laggard about dealing with the problems in the interior. It just appears to operate under the assumption that once we have a road and a port, all our difficulties will evaporate. They will not; on the contrary, they will be compounded. After almost a decade in office the administration still does not have an interior policy to harmonize the conflicting demands on interior resources, and address questions of development in the various locations. There is no evidence either, that the authorities have considered the kinds of resources which they will have to bring to bear in order to ensure the security of the interior, and prevent the new road - not to mention the port - from becoming a major conduit for the export of drugs. Is there too, a development plan for the road itself, and proposals for ensuring that it will be policed adequately, and that settlers can be prevented from establishing themselves willy-nilly anywhere along its route?

Along with the absence of an interior policy, we also lack a border policy. The road, and by extension the port, will place border issues in an entirely new context. There is absolutely no evidence that the Government has thought carefully about that either.

At present the administration is like a man blindfolded, stepping out into uncertain terrain simply on faith, because he has been told by others that better things lie ahead. He has taken no precautions, however, to have the land surveyed first, so he does not stumble and fall. The port project is probably at this stage more in Brazil's interest than it is in ours. This does not mean to say that we could not eventually derive benefit from it; it is just that we have to do a great deal of work first before we contemplate committing ourselves to it.