Ministers versus the masses

Jan 27, 2024 Editorial

Kaieteur News – Ministers in the PPPC Government are doing very well. Compared to the hungry and increasingly angry masses of Guyana, senior and junior ministers are way ahead of the ordinary people of Guyana. They trump the man-in-the-street with salaries, and it is not by a small margin, but in great multiples. This emphasizes one point: when they grab so much for themselves, there is only so little left for the small man and woman to share among themselves. But ministers of the PPPC Government are not done yet with the self-enrichment, for there is the provision of allowances that come with the job, and which catapults them by leaps and bounds over where regular Guyanese are.

A senior minister receives a monthly salary of $1,070,000, while that of a junior one is tidy, not so shabby, amount of $856,000. Both of these salary figures place ministers in a different world from lower-income citizens, one that is totally unknown to them. When matched against what the lower paid worker in this country collects, the ratio stands at close to 15 to 1 in favor of ministers. But that is not all, for when the variety of allowances is entered into the arithmetic; the difference is approximately 25 to 1. The small-time, low-level worker in the domestic environment does not know what it is to receive allowances; he or she is fortunate to have a minimum wage job. But a ratio of 15:1 for monthly salaries first, and then as high as 25:1 for senior ministers, when all the other pieces of their total compensation package are added, conveys the different world in which the political top dogs live in, as opposed to the one with which the citizens on the lower economic floors of Guyana are forced to grapple. Since returning to power, the PPPC Government has rewarded its ministers with a monthly increase of $200,000. We urge all citizens to check how all the increases and provisions that the propagandists are asking to be looked at holistically (and not in isolation) matchup in comparison to the $200,000 more that senior ministers now receive.

This differential should open the eyes of all citizens, regarding why senior and junior ministers in the PPPC Government are so star struck by the exploits of ExxonMobil, with Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, happy to be the leader of the pack. Because they are gorged with riches, leaders and ministers in the PPPC Government transform into towers of strength when they fight their own Guyanese (supporters included) to protect the predatory behavior of ExxonMobil and its handpicked consortium operating the people’s offshore oilfields. That is the first cat that escaped from the bag, and confirms that ministers and leaders are so fattened, and so content, with where they are that ExxonMobil doesn’t have a worry in the world. The political big shots in government corridors could live the high life from the salaries and allowances they receive, so they do not have any time to spare for those Guyanese who are running out of steam to stay on their feet.

Ministers are doing so good that they have the luxury of lecturing Guyanese who are paralyzed by need and anxiety. They tell the people about how much they and the government are doing for them, while keeping quiet about how they live in a banquet of opulence. When salaries and allowances are almost $2 million monthly for senior ministers, they have neither insight nor understanding about the brutal impacts of a spiraling cost-of-living environment on ordinary Guyanese. Ministers are comfortably and sweetly ensconced in their economic ivory towers, but they still have the presumptuousness and audacity to deceive Guyanese living in the mud-splattered trenches, about how much has been done for them.

More recently, it is about how they should be able to manage with the pittances that are provided in this year’s budget for their class. Now the fixed incomes (Old Age Pension and NIS pension) of elderly couples are combined, and it is impressed upon them about how better they should be able to deal with cost-of-living pressures, compliments of a compassionate PPPC Government. Ministers collect the cream, while impoverished citizens collect and must make do with crumbs.