President visits East Canje with relief hampers

Sep 02, 2020 News

– commits to campaign promise of restoring jobs and making life easier.
– says previous administration left the country with significant liabilities

President Irfaan Ali made his first visit since his inauguration to East Canje, Region Six yesterday.

President Irfaan Ali with beneficiaries of some of the hampers in the East Berbice area yesterday.

During his visit with his team from the Office of the President, hampers were distributed to the communities which were directly affected by the closure of the sugar estates under the coalition administration.
Those villages included Gangaram, Betsy Ground, Good Bananan Land, Adelphi, Reliance and Canefield.
President Ali, during the meet with the residents, recommitted to many promises made during the campaign trail, most notably to restore the jobs that were lost and make investments that will be “support the children, the pensioners, reduce expenditures on water and electricity” among many others.
Thousands of sugar workers had lost their jobs when the Wales, Skeldon and the Rose Hall estates were closed by the previous administration.
As a result, these workers who had families or who were working with the estates for years were directly affected. They have been complaining bitterly of the hardships.
The sacked workers were given severance but their money has run out and reality has started to step in.
They complained that children were forced to leave school, loans were not paid and many persons simply said that they could not afford three square meals a day.
However, during the lead up to the elections, the Peoples Progressive Party/Civic, not in government, had promised to re-open the sugar estates and restore the jobs lost.
President Ali, at one of the locations visited yesterday, said that many communities were also faced with additional problems from the sloth in the economy and the loss of jobs after RUSAL and Oldendorff shutting of operations in Berbice… hundreds of employees were put on the breadline.
He said because of the hardships the people have been facing, his government is determined to bring relief in the communities, the household level and the families.
“We said we would address the issue of sugar that we will address the issue of employment and we will address the issue of support and improve livelihood at the household level and I want to assure you that those commitments are as strong today as the day we would have made them. We want to make sure that we make the necessary investments to bring back the jobs that were lost in these communities, we are going to bring the investment to support the children, the pensioners, reduce the expenditure on water and electricity etc. We are committed to these things”, he stated.
The President mentioned that his government is pursuing an agenda that will come alive within the next three years… “we are hoping to have our natural gas and energy production, alternative energy hydro project back on stream so that your cost of your electricity will be at least half of what it is. These are the things that we are going to pursue. We are going to pursue investment in sugar, make sugar stronger. We have a special sub-committee to look at the bauxite issue so there are a lot of things that are going on.”
Ali told the people that his government stands committed to bringing improvement to the lives of everyone and the community. He assured that their aim is to work “progressively” everyday so that “economic life can be restored”.
According to Ali, while there is now an emergency budget in the pipelines- they are faced with a few difficulties including “ the liabilities that the previous government left us with so a lot of room in the emergency budget was taken up with those liabilities but before the end of this week you will hear about this.”
This, he said, has not allowed for much flexibility considering what they want to achieve.