Stipends for Community Enhancement Workers will increase from $25,000 to $35,000 this year, Minister of Local Government and Regional Development, Nigel Dharamlall has announced.
He made the disclosure at a recent community outreach at Nonpareil, East Coast Demerara. Some $1.1 billion has been allocated for the programme to continue efforts to preserve and enhance communities’ aesthetics and infrastructure countrywide. “It is our intention to have more community enhancement workers, and even better than that, instead of paying the $25,000 per month, we will now pay them $35,000 per month,” Minister Dharamlall is quoted in a Department of Public Information release as saying.
Minister Dharamlall said the call for an increase came from the workers last year and the increase represents a commitment made by President Dr. Mohamed Irfaan being kept.
The Minister said there was significant discrimination in the way the programme was managed under the APNU+AFC. He said not all communities received the same type of support and persons were selectively chosen for employment. However, Minister Dharamlall said that type of management would stop, and he encouraged the residents to seek employment at the Ministry.
Community Enhancement Workers work four hours per day and 16 days per month. The Minister said he expects the work of the CEWs to step up.
“We believe that during the course of this year a lot of community enhancement work will be intensified and Guyana is going to transform very quickly and in a very massive way,” the Minister said.
The PPP/C Government in its manifesto committed to creating 50,000 jobs for Guyanese in five years. CEWs falls under the Community Infrastructure Improvement Project (CIIP). It not only creates jobs, but also boost villages, regional economies and the tourism sector.
The CIIP was started in 2014 and was modified in 2015 to decentralise resources to the Local Democratic Organs. This restructuring has seen the day-to-day management of the workers transferred from under the purview of the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development to the local democratic areas via the Community Enhancement Initiative. The CIIP also enables NDCs to provide services to communities and to encourage citizens to pay their rates and taxes to facilitate maintenance of crucial structures and other development works.
