Poor people are punishing!

Oct 12, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

I do not know what is going to happen to poor people in Guyana. Things are becoming more difficult for them in Guyana, even though things should have been improving.
It was shocking to discover the sort of house rentals that are being charged today. Rentals should have fallen to rock bottom because of the fact that more than fifty thousand housing units were established over the past twenty years.
Yet despite this massive increase in houses, rentals are still sky-high. This is hurting poor people in Guyana because many of them cannot afford to buy a government house lot much less to put up a structure on it.
They are forced to rent and they are finding that they cannot afford the high cost of rent.
Landlords are exploiting poor people in Guyana. Rentals are very high and the poor people simply cannot pay the high rentals being charged. In other cases, property owners are afraid to rent their property because tenants are not paying and to get them evicted involves a lengthy and costly legal process.
The poor people are hurting from the high cost of living. You go to the supermarket or market and you are returning with fewer goods than before.
A small bundle of items is costing. People are hurting because they do not have the money to pay for these goods. Money is not circulating and many poor persons are not having jobs. They cannot afford the groceries each month.
The 10% increase that the government is paying to the workers in the lower tiers of the salary scale is not going to stretch that far. Not with the way prices are increasing in the supermarket. Yet we are told that inflation in 2015 was negative. Tell that to the poor man when he goes to buy his monthly grocery supplies.
Even prices at the green grocers have increased. Chicken and fish prices have still not been slashed to make them more readily affordable to the poor man.
Food is not the only expense people have. Transportation is also a problem. The fares for public transportation have also increased. Short drops which used to be $60 are now $80 per trip.
It may seem a small amount but for the average worker having to pay an extra $20 per day, it adds up, especially when you have one or two children. If you have to travel a little further, the fare increases and this is one of the main reasons why many parents cannot send their children to school. They cannot afford the additional cost, especially since there is a slowdown in business activity in the economy.
Christmas is around the corner and the poor man needs an extra dollar. At this time of the year, it is always difficult to get handymen to do jobs. They are usually fully booked from September right through to January.
Well, not anymore. A lot of poor artisans who would usually have their hands full at this time are finding it difficult to get jobs. People are not repairing and repainting as much this year as in the past and therefore a lot of handymen are going to have it tough this Christmas.
People are holding back. They are afraid to spend their money because they do not know what the future brings. They are therefore not spending because they are uncertain about the business climate in Guyana.
Overseas Guyanese are also holding back what they used to send because a lot of their relatives are now getting visas and are making regular holiday trips overseas. Remittances are down.
If remittances are down, it means that poor people who are accustomed to these transfers are going to be in a worse situation that they were before.

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