Multiple local financial crises to intensify

Apr 29, 2020 Editorial

The arresting news caption told only part of the tale: “Financial crisis looms after April – Former Auditor General, Goolsarran” (KN April 28). We say that, though stark and spot on, it is only part of the story that does not merely loom for many in this society, but is already here and intensifying daily. The frightening reality is of multiple converging crises and with intensifying pains for those who can least bear them.
Mr. Goolsarran, an expert of enduring pedigree, first pointed out the limitations imposed on filling funding requirements of the state because of the extended political impasses. It was noted that any stopgap measures employed “will be insufficient to meet the cost of essential services.” And this is in a possible best-case scenario, should there be no political resolution to what is best described as a state of hung or lame duck national government.
Since any monies accessed would be inadequate to address basic needs, social stringencies are sure to follow, with all their impacts felt by an already besieged and hapless citizenry. But that is still slightly around the corner, and not quite here at this time. What is here, and right now, at the individual and commercial levels are the hardships and agonies delivered in one savaging blow after another.
We put a human face to the plights experienced, of which there are many such aggrieved faces and many compounding plights. We plead with our political powers, all of them, but especially the still governing coalition: listen and heed, please.
Many workers have been forced to remain indoors full-time. They have no income, which means no spending power, which translates to not being able to access basics for table and family, which signifies not having and having to do without. Many of our fellow citizens live paycheck to paycheck, and now that is gone, has been gone for weeks best not remembered. There is little or no reserve left. That is the disturbing saga of those sent home because their places of employment are either deemed nonessential or the managers are fearful. We need a political resolution and we need it yesterday.
It is the same unforgiving circumstances for the many small contingents of citizens who work for themselves (“independent contractors”), those who farm out their skills, their equipment, through various services offered in private residences and businesses with which they have established relationships.
The picture that is repeated and encountered continuously is of closed gates and doors, as in nothing doing. Not today or anytime soon is the word from homeowners and business owners, because of mounting unease and a settled lack of confidence over government’s handling of the COVID-19 virus. These independents, too, are not earning and, therefore, are not managing well. Are our political leaders still on this planet? Anywhere around these 83,000 square miles?
The expanding ripples – indeed, wave after wave – of the squeezing and enfeebling reach beyond small individuals and families and homes. Business existing in a state of lockdown, or compressed schedules, are not earning, not employing, not paying taxes. They cannot pay to either bank or utility providers or municipal government, among other places owed.
The continually cash-strapped City Council of Georgetown could soon be near to screaming point. Now comes the piercing pinches, the many pains on the way, unless something gives. We ask the questions that come too easily at this time of gloom: who is going to collect the garbage in the capital? Who is going to man the markets? And who among those struggling citizens at the bottom of the economic ladder is going to be able to manage without the temporary lifesaver of something to take home to the family?
We at this newspaper pause to remind all politicians now locked in a deathlike struggle. Not a single component laid out above, (there are countless others) is of the abstract. It is of Guyanese men and women and their partners and their children, the flesh and blood that chill and crumple before the circumstances that they must confront currently and daily.
This country needs a political resolution to our political seizures. And it needs it now. We appeal: come to senses and do it. Just do it!

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Multiple local financial crises to intensify

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