National minimum wage citizens

Apr 15, 2026 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

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(Kaieteur News) – For several years, senior citizens received an increase in their monthly pensions.  Paltry and unlivable, but an extra dollar for cash-stressed elderly.  Public servants from juniors to apex seniors, notably the president, have received a salary increase.  Trade unions negotiated with private entities to gain increases for their members.

Generally speaking, the increases may be cheap and slender, given the scanty percentages.  There are exceptions.  Examples include the president, ministers, opposition members, and senior or mid-level public servants.  Try this: 10% of $3,000,000 is $300,000 (president).  Or a million is $100,000 (PS).  Better yet, allowances (utilities, security, hospitality, more) attached to some high-level jobs would be more than enough for a stuck-at-the-bottom Guyanese to manage Guyana’s living challenges fairly reasonably.

But what about Guyana’s minimum wage workers?  Where do they stand?  What’s been done for them?  How do they manage?  To survive?  What do their numbers say?

The Ministry of Labour proudly reported that effective, July 1, 2022, the national monthly minimum wage is $60,147.  Three months hence, it would be four years since that $60,147 monthly minimum wage humiliation and heartbreak has stayed unmoving, stagnant as an abandoned latrine.  First inquiry: how many private sector minimum wage workers are they in Guyana?  Second, how many of them are still around (alive and well)?  Third, how many forced to beggary, thievery, or bodily slavery, to cope (to a point), to feed their families (decently, humanely, daily)?  No mentioning of Stats Chief, Dr. Errol de la Cruz’s, preliminary census report, and what it contains or doesn’t include in relation to this issue.  Similarly, no disparagement is made today of official food inflation levels, or overall inflation baskets and indexes, regardless of source.  What is asked again is how do these Guyanese live, creep from one day to the next?

I shall not condemn Pres. Ali nor Dr. Singh for inaction or ineptitude.  May infuriate, but of no help.  But for minimum wage workers to be buried and forgotten since July 2022 to April 2026 must qualify as a national disgrace, stench.  Neither may welcome; I will manage.  But can either of these two legendary Guyanese superstars now dancing with the stars (Exxon, Rubio, Arab sheiks, and Polynesians), disagree with me?  Is there anything that kind and caring Dr. Ali, and grim-faced and sharp-eyed Dr. Singh, can retrieve from their capacious intellectual reservoirs as arguments in their favour?

For sure, more roads have been built, with billions expended.  But those have become a trail of tears for minimum wage Guyanese workers who see them and weep.  In substance: they can be used.  But to buy what and with what?  Maybe a small, tight, light basket of pumpkin seeds.  Like potato skin, word is that pumpkin seeds are nutritious.  Okay! Guyanese can afford to purchase a gallon of rice, a kilo of flour, and a pint of oil.  But what else?  What else after a bottle of cooking gas?  The rent collector and mortgage banker (if there is one) has his hand stretched out, and he or she is not taking no for an answer.  Pay that monthly debt and plunge into financial depths for the rest of the month.  Month after dismal, despondent, destitute month.

In the unlikely event that Excellency Ali was unaware of the national minimum wage situation, I do the honours.  Respectfully, naturally.  More for the office, far less the man.  How can there be drinking champagne and gorging on caviar (halal, of course and no relation), when men and women earning $60,147 monthly are reduced to fine dining on coconut shells and castor oil?  For Dr. Ashni “NDP” Singh, when budget numbers roll off paper and palate, the reality is that Guyanese lowest wage earners are degraded to nonpersons, treated worse than inconvenient census detritus.  I hear that Dr. Singh has a heart.  Either he had a transplant since; or it’s an artificial one.  A cash grant helps, but not for long.  When market day is dreaded, and cooking time induces chronic pain, in minimum wage recipients, I assert the obvious: government has partnered with commercial allies to weaken, sicken, Guyana’s lowest wage earners.

No stones are hurled.  No insults delivered.  No official stats comfort.  No graph, chart, table helps their day.  Simply, this shouldn’t be.  Not even to a dog.  Over to Drs. Ali and NDP Singh.

(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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• GHK Lall, low pay, minimum wage, Paltry, salary

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