Budget 2024: An abomination and beatdown of Guyanese

Jan 17, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – We are looking diligently for it, but there is difficulty finding the cost-of-living relief said by more than one government leader to be on the way. Real cost-of-living relief that makes a difference for ordinary citizens, who are feeling considerable pain in trying to cope. In short, Budget 2024 is an abomination, a bitter pill, for Guyanese who were expecting something meaningful from it.

The PPPC Government may pride itself on its GY$5,000 increase for children, and think that that kind of assistance represents big money for poor people. Similarly, a meagre GY$3,000 increase for 76,000 old age pensioners is more than shaming the elderly, it is a vulgar insult that does not have much by way of comparison. Which leader with any self-regard, any decency about him, would even think about Guyanese who are fixed income, sometimes one income only, and increase it by an obscene $3,000 in a more than trillion-dollar budget? Which national government of pride, with some degree of purity about it, would think a $3,000 increase for the elderly and another $3,000 increase for the disabled is a bonanza for those in dire need?

There is $10,000 more for schoolchildren (uniform allowance included), an increase for NIS pensioners, assistance with eyecare, help with fire-related devices, and a continuation of the fuel and freight ‘relief’ measures that were already in place. According to Budget 2024 presenter, Dr. Ashni Singh, the cumulative amount in dollars is over GY$70 billion in a wide-ranging programme of assistance embedded in this year’s budget. If over GY$70 billion is all the PPPC Government can bring itself to extend to Guyanese poor out of a budget of GY$1.146 trillion, then this government and its leaders are more impoverished than the countless struggling Guyanese. Because all the dollars which Dr. Singh was so pleased with himself to present ought to be multiples of what was heard. Pensioners should be receiving double that $3,000 monthly increase, if not more. The same is true for those with disabilities, and in many of the other relief areas highlighted in this budget. Multiples of the amounts identified would be real money for really suffering people in a budget with real meaning.

President Ali had setup Guyanese with big talk about cost-of-living relief being on the way through the budget, only to let them down crushingly. Where is the relief that amounts to something that is material, really so? Guyana is a top oil economy with numbers and dollars like never before in the hard economic history of this country. Where is the benefit/relief to Guyanese, those who need it the most, and who have been dragging for several years now? It is now obvious beyond debate that the PPPC Government is callous and vicious in how it dashes the hopes of Guyanese, how it strings them along, and how it is allowed to get away with economic violence of this nature.

In another country, one less partisan, there would be an explosion of raw emotion at the wanton disregard of the PPPC Government for the wellbeing of citizens. Record budget after record budget, and the people end up with pittances masquerading as relief. In a real country, where citizens recognize what is going on, and where the bulk of the budget monies is going, the government of the day would not only be run out of office, it would also be run straight out of town. This GY$1.146 trillion is an insult to the conscience of the Guyanese, none as much as the hundreds of thousands of them who are left to fend for themselves any way that they can.

This is in an economy that the world drools over, and with national budgets to match. There is something patently unreal and unfair about the provisions made in this year’s budget for Guyanese who are feeling the pain. There should be days of rage that do not end, with citizens not taking this sitting down. This revulsion of a budget must be roundly condemned and cursed for its ugliness, and the rank unfairness of what is being done to Guyanese with their own wealth by their own people that they elected, who commit these crimes against them.

abomination, assistance, beatdown, Editorial, Guyanese

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Budget 2024: An abomination and beatdown of Guyanese

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