Georgetown, Guyana.
October 7, 2022
For immediate release to all media houses.
PRESS STATEMENT
Cash Grant for Pensioners
Yesterday the pensioners of Guyana were greeted with an announcement from President Irfaan Ali that a one-off cash grant of $28,000 would be paid to every Guyanese pensioner.
The Alliance For Change (AFC) is happy when Government allocates from our national coffers funds to assist the most venerable in our society and has long been calling for substantial increase in salaries for pensioners, teachers and other public servants.
Although many including pensioners might receive this announcement with jubilation, the AFC continues to reject the subjective, underhand distribution of one off cash grants that continues to take place, without the guarantee of fair, equal distribution to all deserving and with the requisite checks and balances in place to avoid the corruption we have seen in several of these programmes.
It is important to recall that at a time when money was scarce in Guyana and the Government of the day had a challenge balancing the budget – four increases in Pensions were granted under the APNU+AFC moving pensions from $13, 500 in 2015 to $20,500 in 2019 a 55% increase in four years. In fact, in the first 18 months the APNU+AFC government increased pensions 18%.
The Alliance For Change therefore finds it totally unacceptable that with the windfall Guyana has received from our oil revenues and talk from the Government that we are the next Dubai of the world, that pensioners today receive only $28,000 a little over 100 US to live on for an entire month.
The fact that in fashioning this small donation the Government did not see it fit to raise the pension base so that any increase granted would not be a one off but received every month, is deplorable and testimony to how little they care.
With all sectors complaining of the massive price increases citizens face today, how do we expect the most venerable in our society – our pensioners to survive.
We ask this PPP Government, as an oil producing nation with so much so called successes taking place in Industry, billion dollar infrastructure projects and increasing investments –we wonder is this the best we can do?
It is once again clear to all that the PPP’s cash grants programme is handing out crumbs to the citizens when today’s economy can distribute much more. So much for we care.
PPP’s Vision of Division Continues
The continuing non-disbursement of funding by Government to IDPADA-G, notwithstanding the organization’s complete transparency and accountability of its subvention, and its stellar operational integrity, is an example of a vision of division by the PPP and its numero uno Bharat Jagdeo and its wannabe numero uno, Charles Ramson Jnr.
The AFC views this kind of politics as wholly anti-national and its consequences will create only deeper fissures within our ethnic communities which manage by and large to co-exist.
The AFC fears that the consequences may be even more horrific if, as is being sensed on the ground, an interpretation is given that this is a form of terrorism unleashed by those who claim to love Guyana more than all others, but whose ethnic politics has only the aim of monopolising power.
When the decision was made for IDPADA-G to be given monies in 2017 for a decade long recognition of African people, there was no public objection from the then PPP Opposition. The AFC is aware that the then PPP Opposition did not mind, since the Coalition Government was continuing to extend billions of dollars into a sugar sector, via transfers to a dying GuySuCo, which is preponderantly of one ethnic community. At that time some $19B was transferred.
This discriminatory action of denial of funding to IDPADA-G will not build national cohesion nor a One Guyana.
The AFC calls on the people of Guyana, especially right-thinking East Indians, to show outrage at this development, and to resist it dutifully and unrelentingly.
End.
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