CLOSURE BEING PUT TO OIL HAND OUT DEBATE

Oct 14, 2019 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
Closure is being put to the debate to make hand outs of the oil revenue money to the population. The WPA pressure group consisting of the venerable octogenarian Prof. Thomas and Dr David Hinds were the ones calling for the hand out.
Fortunately, the mainstream political parties, APNU/AFC and PPP have come out squarely on the side of wisdom and national interest and have taken the position that we should go cautiously on any kind of hand out of the kind suggested. The reasons why they are cautious are:
(1) To hand out money to people who do not work or produce anything for the money will cultivate lazy people who will want to consume all the time without any effort to work. And when the handout money ceases, and cease it will, they will be plunged into a poverty from which they would never emerge. To save people from that disastrous situation the mainstream parties are cautious about handouts.
(2) Oil Revenues are meant to be invested to the enhancement of social services such as Education, Health, pensions and so on so that we will have a world class health and education system and social security system. The money will also be invested in Agriculture, Industry, Mining, Forestry and Hydropower, etc., so as to build up a prosperous economy that will continue even when oil runs out as in Trinidad. President Granger used the old adage to illustrate this: “Don’t give people a fish to eat because they demand it; rather, teach them how to fish so that they will never be out of fish”. In other words, don’t consume your oil revenues but invest it so that it will bring in continuous income.
(3) In any case, the oil revenues for several years would not be able to meet the cash payouts suggested; it would be several years before this is possible. This fact alone should put to rest the consumption demand at this time.
(4) The Guyanese population are intelligent enough to trust the main political parties to make sensible investment that will continue to generate wealth rather than to use up the revenues in consumption. With the continuous generation of wealth, standards of living would rise and unemployment would be a thing of the past.
(5) The experience of other oil producing countries would be helpful: Those which invested the revenues in economic development were able to continue generating wealth for the population while those which consumed the wealth remained poor when oil prices fall or the oil reserves are diminished.
We hope APNU/AFC and PPP and other political parties would continue to invest in income bearing industries rather than to consume the money and be left poor in the end.
Yours sincerely
Paul Validum Ramlochan,

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