President Scrooge

Dec 15, 2023 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Charles Dickens’ classic about the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge, an English banker, could very well apply to almost any Guyanese government leader. So much money in hand, fists so tightly closed, like a pawnbroker, so punishing, like a moneylender. These are the dreadful circumstances that approximately 54,000 Guyanese public servants find themselves in at this time of joy and goodwill.

A case could be made that the millions of American dollars withdrawn are for priority national security considerations, given the momentum and urgency of the Venezuelan threat, with its unpredictable president plotting and running amok.

In September, Guyana’s own President Ali gave every assurance to public servants that something was going to come their way come later in the year, viz., around this holiday season. What has come in tatters and ragged slippers is a scrawny and sickly Scrooge. Public servants now celebrate the timely generosity, and the grand bounty, of a 6.5 percent raise. But there is a silver lining in what has to be nothing but a mudpie. The 6.5 percent raise is retroactive to January 01. If President Ali and the PPPC Government expect to be applauded for their small mercies (6.5 percent), then both are in for the biggest boo that public servants can muster. Our position is simple: this 6.5 percent raise is not right. And it should be hauled out of sight, since it is such a blight and blotch on this season of lavishness, this era of national richness.

The president said that accounts have to be analysed, and that the most prudent management of the country’s endowments is always a priority. But public servants and teachers and members of the Joint Services will all have their day. It is a dismal day, when President Ali could be so reminiscent of Ebenezer Scrooge: so hard of heart, so lacking in understanding that many Guyanese are weak from fighting with cost-of-living, and so casual about his people’s condition. We are sure that the president and his minister in charge of some money decisions, Dr. Ashni Singh, are well aware that a 6.5 percent raise is an insult, a slap in the face of Guyanese public servants and their families. For those earning $250,000 and upwards monthly, some breathing room may be afforded. But for those below that testing figure, living becomes a test of endurance, a daily battle to survive.

In the politest fashion that we can think of, this question is put before President Ali and Dr. Ashni Singh: what can 6.5 percent buy? Whether GY$50,000 or GY$100,000 in retroactive pay, how many items could that cover, what beyond the basics, if anything at all? It is going to be a White Christmas for public servants, with their hopes for a fair share of Guyana’s wealth subject to the worst of leadership whiteout that can be imagined. Even at this early moment, there is palpable fear in the thinking of many public servants on the lower ends of the salary bands regarding what the looming new year could hold. In the richest country in the world, Guyanese cannot even dream, constantly lose hope, when there are Scrooges by the dozens prancing around and making speeches about how great they are for Guyanese.

Pensioners got the pittance of a one-time GY$25,000 cash envelope, which was an ordeal of official tortures, just to collect. Following the pittance of GY$25,000 for some 75,000 elderly, there is now the stinginess of a 6.5 percent increase for 54,000 public servants. Well-set farmers got hundreds of thousands for fertilizers, yet the crops that they produce skin Guyanese alive. The farmers take a leaf out of the PPPC Government’s book: Guyanese are gouged every time. Public servants are gouged, the psyche of working-class Guyanese are ripped to shreds, and all the while the Minister of Finance is proud to speak of “national development priorities”, which are a secret to all others.

Almost GY$200 billion withdrawn from the Oil Fund, and Guyanese public servants and pensioners cannot buy bread. Guyanese are too docile, their government too depraved. This country is too rich for a single Guyanese to live with needs unfulfilled, for a government and its leaders to be so self-centered and cruel.

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American, Charles Dickens, Ebenezer Scrooge, English banker, Guyanese

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