Take it or leave it!

Dec 21, 2016 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

You only live once. And it is not everyone in the world who will live to hear the government tell its debtors: “Take it or leave it”.
Guyanese are lucky. They have had the privilege of hearing these words coming from the mouth of a Government minister.
Which government in the world will be so brazen as to tell persons who believe they are owed money by the State to either take a part payment or leave it.
“Take it or leave it.” This is the philosophy of the APNU+AFC government.
The coalition government earlier this year entered into negotiations with the Guyana Public Service Union over wage increases for 2016. The situation reached a stage where the government affectively told the union that its last offer was a final offer. The government even threatened to go ahead and pay the workers if the union did not accept. This, in effect, was an ultimatum to the union and to the workers: take it or leave it.
The government went ahead and paid it. The union said the government was not acting in good faith. The workers took the money. The union tried to conceal its helplessness by saying that it considered the payment an installment until an agreement was reached. As far as the government is concerned, as far as the increase was concerned, the workers had to “take it or leave it.”
The government held cosmetic consultations with the private sector in the days before the 2017 Budget. The private sector called for certain things. They got more than they expected. They were given a shock.
They got a reduction of the corporation tax, an increase in the income tax threshold and a reduction in VAT. The government, however, gave with one hand and took with the other, including the removal of certain input taxes and the extension of VAT to water and electricity. An environmental tax will now also apply to every item produced in a bottle or can locally as well as those imported. Tax penalties will become highly punitive.
The private sector and labour called during the Budget debate for consultations. The very government which boasted that its Budget was a product of consultations is not adamantly refusing to hold talks with the labour movement and the private sector. The government is not telling them to haul their… you know what. It is telling the private sector and the labour movement that the Budget is a done deal. They either take it or leave it.
But the most obscene situation is the debts that are owed to companies and contractors for work done at Durban Park Drill Square. The government had secretly gone about establishing a private company to develop Durban Park. The company solicited donations in cash and kind and also contracted persons and procured supplies to undertake the works at Durban Park.
The private company, established by government, owes a number of contractors and companies. It would not be unreasonable for those companies and contractors to believe that they are owed by the government. After all, Durban Park is still supposed to be a government entity and the government is moving to settle the indebtedness of its special all- purpose private company.
But instead of paying those who are owed all that is owed, the government is now saying that it will also pay $500 million while the remaining debt of $250 M will not be honored. The government has not been diplomatic. It has told those who are owed to take what they will get or leave it.
Those persons and entities will feel conned. They will feel that they were contracted to do works and now they are not going to be paid because as far as the government is concerned this is another egregious example of “take it or leave it”.
This is the change that Guyanese voted for. They have to either “take it or leave it.” The Guyanese people will take it. This is what they have always done. They have always allowed governments to run roughshod over them.

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