Opposition vote against $800M budget for Indigenous development

Sep 23, 2020 News

Slight chaos erupted yesterday at the National Assembly after 25 Parliamentarians from the Opposition’s A Partnership for National Unity + Alliance For Change (APNU+AFC) Coalition voted against the more-than $300 million budgetary allocation for indigenous development.

Government and Opposition MPs in the National Assembly

That sum was budgeted for equipment to support agriculture, youth development, the reinstatement of the Community Support Officers project, transport; which includes procuring of ATVs and pickup trucks for Amerindian villages.
The issue arose after Speaker of the House, Manzoor Nadir, announced that he could not allow further time to scrutinize estimates for the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs in the 2020 National Budget.
The MPs had already exhausted the one-hour allotted for scrutiny and the Speaker went ahead and put the funding for approval without any further questions being asked.
This erupted in unrest from the Opposition who requested a division of the House. That request was followed by loud shouts of “We must know why, what the money is for.”
In a statement later that day, the Opposition deemed the action “a flagrant attempt” by the People’s Progressive Party Civic government to use the Indigenous peoples as “decoys for the misuse of state funds.”
The Coalition claimed that: “Following credible information that the new PPP/C ‘Ministry of Amerindian Affairs’ is creating a slush fund to allow for corrupt practices, the APNU+AFC Coalition today pressed the subject Minister, Ms. Pauline Sukhai for answers during the consideration of the budget estimates.”
The Parliamentarians, they added, sought answers to questions about where, when and how the $800,000,000 allocation to the ‘Amerindian Fund’ will be disbursed under the Ministry’s Community Development and Empowerment Programme.
“Ms. Sukhai appeared confused and was unable to provide clear answers to the direct questions,” the Opposition said, citing that the Coalition could not give its approval for the “misuse and abuse of taxpayers’ monies.”
The Coalition stressed that it was an “early attempt to defraud the Treasury while using our Indigenous peoples as the cover for doing so.”
“Our Indigenous peoples deserve transparency and accountability,” APNU+AFC said “They deserve better than the mischievous and coercive tactics that the PPP/C uses to address their needs. This is not the first such attempt as the PPP did similar in their previous terms. The age-old PPP/C policy of siphoning off the major share of funds for party friends while a minuscule portion is delivered to the people in the villages is well known.”
The Coalition made it clear that they will continue to represent their interests and scrutinize the sums being sought by the PPP and vowed to register disapproval whenever obvious instances of possible corruption arise.

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