H@rd Truths by GHK Lall – COST OF LIVING VERSUS LIVING LARGE

Sep 08, 2023 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – Wherever SN’s cost-of-living team visits and speaks with those residents who consent to go on camera and by name, it is the same story. It is the brutalizing story of Guyanese suffering, struggling, and sinking from their efforts to scrape out what is charitably called a human existence in the richest country in the world.

Because the pain and anguish are so widespread, I remove the restraints. I drag politicians into the heat of the cost-of-living furnace and dress down the whole sorry bunch of them. There are too many political fat cats around, and they draw the purse strings too stingily. Cost-of-living is killing ordinary Guyanese; crippling would be an understatement. This is the stark backdrop of SN’s 39^th episode in its cost-of-living coverage, with the Indigenous coming under the spotlight.  To their credit, Guyana’s First Citizens faced the cameras and spoke from their hearts: it is an uphill battle to make ends meet.  Not a single person interviewed spoke of living comfortably. The Toshaos can’t buy basic food items (prices); they can’t farm (flooding), and they can’t manage (poverty).  Simply put, they struggle to cope on a daily basis.  For each person that spoke openly and sincerely about their personal conditions, there has to be many others trying to figure out how to deal with their situation.  The beginning and end of this bottomless cost-of-living story is that there are too many locals clustered along the base of Guyana’s economic pyramid.  These wretched ones could be living just above the levels of the people of Haiti and Niger.  And Guyana is the fastest, the biggest, the ‘baddest’…

In contrast to Toshaos (and others), there is another group of Guyanese: the elected and selected perched at the other end of the economic pyramid.  It is the high, fine, rich, and sweet point of the economic peak in oil Guyana.  Many have the look of someone who has overeaten, or well fed to the point of bloat. No hunger, no pain, no pressures of daily living, at those high altitudes, where the financial winds are energizing and refreshing.  It is where there is excess: free food and living off the fat of the land.  There is no consuming of cuirass or catfish up there in the economic highlands of Guyana. Up there is an abundance of chops and cognac, while cost-of-living pummeled Guyanese below scratch for cassava and conga pump, if they can access either. In many respects, this is more than a tale of two societies, it is of the rich man and the poor beggar, Lazarus. Guyanese famishing in cost-of-living hell knows which one are.

In this cost-of-living plagued rich man-poor man society, there is another staggering reality registering. The poor Guyanese at the bottom can’t catch a break (any li’l hustle), while there are no ends of opportunity for the philistines with conspicuous paunches.  It is the imbalance and injustice of poverty that whiplashes Guyanese existence.  There can be argument, there can be debate, but the economics of this country boils down to this: the haves, the have more, and the still want to have more battalions, who congregate on one side.  On the other side, there are those Guyanese masses forced to scrape around for the scraps that they can accumulate, if they are lucky.

Against this backdrop, there is one leader who is the picture of serene indifference, and with speeches to match.  My thought is that which leader could be so negligent, so disconnected, that he is comfortable floating around a country which has Guyanese citizens living in places called Plastic City and Skull City and S**t and Shy City?  In the event that anyone is grappling with the four-letter word beginning with the letter ‘s’ and ending with ‘t’, here is some guidance: think former US President Donald Trump and how he described some countries, including Haiti, likely Guyana also.  Relative to those three local makeshift places identified, their horror story is much more pungent than cost-of-living travails, although there is plenty of that devastating reality.  Theirs is about the cost of scrambling to stay alive in the richest damn country in the world.  By any means possible.  By any hole or any squirrely spot where they can burrow, including graveyards (Skull City).  If any Guyanese wants to workout how the people of S**t and Shy City exist, then focus on the first word and then what the last word (the verb) involves.

But there is good news, a caring government has helpful plans to ease the ‘hard salt and rice’ season.  Relief is on the way.  There is the Powerball provision coming up with the grand total of $7,000 more for the elderly on the way in the next two years.  And, to add a little sugar to the children’s tea, there is the unheard-of sum of $10,000 more, also in the next two years from a caring government.  Just to be on the safe side, and in case some got carried away, those thousands are in good ole Guyana dollars.  The good news is that the dollar is going up.  The bad stuff is that the cost-of-living just did the inexplicable.  It promises to get worse, and will.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of this newspaper and its affiliates.)

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• Camera, efforts, GHK Lall, Guyanese, H@rd Truths

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