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Walton-Desir, Norton rip Govt. $1.146 trillion budget
– say measures fail to address needs of ordinary Guyanese
By Rehana Ramsay
Kaieteur News – Though it is touted as “building prosperity for all,” the 2024 budget is devoid of measures that will uplift the lives of ordinary Guyanese, leading lights in the Opposition, Amanza Walton-Desir and Leader of the Opposition, Aubrey Norton have said.
APNU Opposition Member of Parliament, Amanza Walton Desir
Norton and Walton-Desir’s comments came on Monday evening, moments after the budget was presented to the National Assembly by Minister with the Responsibility for Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh. “As we suspected the 2024 budget was heavy with infrastructure projects. The first thing I will say for budget 2024, if you look at the budget you will see that it isn’t spelling prosperity for all. What it is doing is putting wealth in the hands of those who are aligned with the Government. You have for instance the measures for ordinary citizens are a $ 3000 increase in the pension and I think $3500 on social assistance,” Norton explained.
He lamented, “you are not seeing resources that are going to the people of Guyana. Less than ten percent is being spent on the people. So this talk of prosperity for all is false. This budget is about putting wealth in the hands of family friends and favourites of the Government.”
The Opposition Leader noted that even in the key sectors such as education and health, there are no plans to address the real concerns of the people.
“When we look at education, one would have thought that more resources would have gone to things like transportation but again they are talking infrastructure about building schools, but you are not paying the teachers to teach in those schools. So what is going to happen is billions would be had by certain PPP contractors, while the teachers suffer for want of better pay,” Norton said.
The Opposition Leader noted too that the Government’s position on taking measures to improve the lives of ordinary citizens is evident in the fact that the Minister with responsibility for finance deferred the announcement of wages and salary increases. “The Minister of Finance dares to say till later in the year, he will announce the increases for public servants when he knows fully well the wages and salaries we have now are inadequate…because in essence people’s lives are not being improved. One would have thought that if he wanted to stick to the theme of building prosperity, he would have at least paid public servants a proper salary,” Norton stressed.
Leader of the Opposition, Aubrey Norton
He believes that based on the measures outlined in the budget there is a lot of focus on infrastructure when there is a need for boosting human capacity through adequate training and remuneration packages. Similarly, APNU Opposition Member of Parliament, Amanza Walton Desir was particularly critical of the Government’s decision to continue to pump billions of dollars into the online Goal Scholarship Programme when that money could be used to fund online courses at the University of Guyana.
GOAL is someone’s business
In her opinion, Walton-Desir believes there was no logical reasoning behind the decision. “Why are we spending so much money on this programme when our own university is starved of funds…You know what, that says, it says that the Goal Scholarship programme seems to be somebody’s business and we are going to get to the bottom of it…because we can’t see that year after year in a trillion-dollar budget, you are starving the University of Guyana of resources.”
She opined that the relief measures offered to ordinary citizens should be looked at in keeping with the size of the budget. “When it comes to measures allocated for the poor and working class, they did exactly what they did last year. I am happy to see an increase in measures like public assistance but in a trillion-dollar budget it could be more than $3000”
Further expressing her disappointment in the budget, Walton-Desir described the allocations as being a continuation of last year’s budget.
“There is no emphasis on human and capital development. You see it is heavy on infrastructure. You see all the measures poised to get monies in the hands of big business and not enough disposable income for the common man,” she asserted.
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