NO ONE IS COMPLAINING

Jul 19, 2014 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

If there is expenditure that the combined opposition should regret giving its consent to, it is the $10,000 per student transportation grant. This will cost the treasury over one billion dollars and will go to persons, the vast majority of whom do not need it.
There is a lot of talk in communities about the wasteful expenditure by the government, including that over-sized electricity bill that taxpayers have to fund for under benefits payable to the former President of Guyana. A Partnership for National Unity has lamented the consent that it gave to the six billion dollars for the sugar industry. There was also some hemming and hawing over the subvention to the Guyana Power and Light.
The public has been commenting negatively about these expenditures. But the people have not said a word about the $10,000 that each child will receive as an annual transportation grant for school children. They have said nothing because it benefits them directly, never mind it is for the most part a wasteful piece of expenditure.
No one is complaining about the billion plus dollars that is going to be spent to dole out the $10,000 per year per each student as a transportation grant.
There are multimillionaires in this country who are going to climb the stairs of their children’s schools in order to uplift this $10,000 per child grant. There are persons who drop their children to school in super expensive SUVs. They too will climb the stairs to collect the money. There are many parents who really do not have to expend any money for their children’s transportation since their children live near to the school and usually walk to school.
They too will climb the stairs to collect the money. No worry about the fact that they may be contributing to the wastage of public funds. There are other persons who drop their children to school with their own transportation but who are required to travel to do so in any event since they may work not far away from their children’s schools. They too will be climbing the stairs.
The $10,000 per student transportation grant is as ill- conceived and inequitable as any government social programs can get. This programme should never have passed muster within the Cabinet and it should never have enjoyed the support of the opposition parties in the National Assembly.
It has all the signs of an election-year programme written all over it. If there is anything in 2014 that is a vote garnering measure, it is this transportation grant that is being offered to every student.
There were better options. Throughout Latin America there are a number of conditional cash transfer (CCT) programmes. These programmes are targeted at the very poor and are selectively doled out to needy cases, rather than to all and sundry. In Brazil for example, there is a programme in which the government pays monies to poor parents, not rich and poor but poor parents, providing that the children attend school for a certain number of days each year. In this way, they help support families who may have difficulties but ensure that the children of these families enjoy an education which can be their gateway out of poverty.
In Guyana, instead of identifying those needy cases- and there are thousands in Guyana- and insisting that the parents of the identified send their children to school so as to enjoy the reward, we are doling out $10,000 to every child, including the children of multi-millionaires. This is as cock-eyed as any government programme can get.
It is an insult to the intelligence of the Guyanese people for APNU to be regretting its unconditional subvention to the Guyana Sugar Corporation, when at the same time, it did not oppose this universal transportation grant which the PPP will use to garner votes for local government elections.

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NO ONE IS COMPLAINING

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