Cost of living, stop the pain, deliver more benefits

Jul 19, 2024 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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Kaieteur News – God bless Stabroek News.  When such is due, of course.  In all seriousness, this cost-of-living series, now at volume 84, makes from president to peasant (I am one) look small, feel small, reduce all the words, postures, attitudes, actions, re cost of living in Guyana to the ugliness of a national revulsion.  The president should feel some shame.  I do, for I am thinking that I am eating, but many of my fellow Guyanese toil to do the same, fail when the clock strikes another hour when pangs of hunger twist into tighter knots and fear, when a new day comes in a hard, bitter, punishing year.  SN’s volume 84 was about the tribulations in the island of Wakenaam, and it was at high volume with so much said.  With so much that pierces and hurts.  I hear that there is a caring, loving, celebrating president.  It must be the public relations, the public spectacle, the public comedy that he cares about, loves, celebrates.

“The relevant authority should…” And “the government should…”  And “the government should…”  That was the oratory of those oppressed by the tyranny of a brutalizing cost-of-living, and a PPP Government that is about the tyranny of utter balderdash, hogwash, and trash where a helping hand is needed for Guyanese in dire straits.  Dr. President, Dr. Policymaker Vice President, after all the speeches and serenades, this is how anywhere from one in three, to as many as one in two (possibly), citizens live, survive, in this opulent economic nirvana.  Should President Ali wish for statistics about cost of living, I give him not official creations; I give him the grim reality of food numbers of the people in Wakenaam. Rice weighing 10kg was $2000 a few months ago, it is now $2400 (20%), and depending on the respondent from 16% to as much as 95% (a typo, for sure).  One interviewee said that prices vary from shop to shop.  Five pounds of sugar was $800, is now $1000 (25%); and a 15-lb bag of sugar $1800 a few months ago is now $2400 (33%).  A small pack of Fernleaf milk was $700, now $800 (14%).  There is no place to run, nowhere to shelter, for the local fruits of the land: eddo and plantain are also up.  In sum, every single item identified by our brothers and sisters in Wakenaam in a basic food basket was not in any single-digit percentage, but double-digits and crushingly so.  From where and how national institutions compiling food inflation stats get their underlying data is a mystery.  I tender that it has the power of Freedom House, OP, or OVP behind it; at least the feared specter.  This is what converts official food inflation statistics to a perpetual tic in the eyelid and the cheeks of hurting citizens.  A pain in the gut, it is.  Check out and listen to the villagers of Wakenaam living in an unending wake with food prices.  I boldly assert that official food inflation statistics increasingly takes on every appearance of a patented farce, the disturbing product of massaging to please.

Taking a deeper dive into this cost-of-living atrocity, one household boasted as many as five earners, and still the best that it can do is “coping.”  Five of the 10 Wakenaam interviewees are pensioners.  They can’t wait for the next month, and the call from more than one source was for more in the monthly collection.  Many of the 10 residents facing the camera and mic are also farmers, and still the struggle is deep and choking.  Here is a first horror story about how poignant and strangling the cost of living is in this glittering Guyana Oil Kingdom, “I try to cut from the grocery side to pay my utility bills” (Yvette Martin, pensioner).  Was that heard, Dr. President?  Here is a second, “I usually credit food items…and when I get my pension, I would pay…” Here is a third, “if I cook today, sometimes I cannot afford to cook tomorrow.” This is where GDP and economy burst seams but rip the soul out of Guyanese.  Try that for the effects of benefits, Dr. Chief Policymaker.  Guyana is hurting in this time of spectacular oil harvests.

Moreover, the near constant was of many households having two or more family members working, and still buying food is a trial, a dread.  Because Wakenaam is a farming community, everybody is selling, leading to oversupply, which means lower demand and lower prices for those selling.  Perhaps, the economist has a slice of wisdom to share.  Since the PPP Government could care less (because of these circumstances all over), I urge Guyanese to economize – forget about milk (unless there are babies), drink black tea.  Knockout sugar. It’s healthier.  There is no recommendation for flour, rice, and oil.  How about family-processed coconut oil?  I close, what is happening to poor, working class men and women in Guyana shouldn’t happen to a dog.  To be brutally candid, I don’t think that the PPP Government gives a damn.  Cost-of-living cries fall on deaf ears, hard hearts, and stoned heads.  The latter is from the revelries, and unprecedented overemphasis on infrastructure (58% of the 2024 national budget), which is the camouflage for the billion-dollar corruptions that put this country into cardiac arrest, national grieving.  Prices are pummeling poor Guyanese, driving them deeper into the ranks of the needy, poverty. Do something, Excellency.  Some meaningful benefits would make a difference, Dr. Chief Policymaker.

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

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• actions, attitudes, GHK Lall, postures, President

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