By GHK Lall- Guyana and Australia are far apart. Guyana is on top of the world, while Australia is Down Below, at the bottom of the world. But there is a sizable demographic in this country, that is so far down the national oil ladder that they think and feel they are at the bottom of the world. It is a stat that is hidden-poverty line, those straddling it, those below it-and that is the single test that serves as the measure of Guyanese conditions. It is the amount of food and food-related basics that they can afford to buy.
Stabroek News has been the long-running investigator, never giving up on “How the Cost of Living is affecting people.” Cost of living must not be allowed to become a cold case; but its presentation and maintenance a burning sensation in the eyes of politicians and on the nation. It should be unnerving, find neither invitation nor welcome, but there it is with the 155th knock on the door, across the national windscreen.
Something strikes right between the eyes, like a well-aimed slingshot. It makes no difference whether the SN Cost of Living truth-seekers visit North Timehri or Mibicuri North Black Bush Polder, the word is the same. The moans and groans from those citizens trapped somewhere between three-fifths to two-thirds down the national economic ladder are the same.
Cost of living is very hard. Cost of living is crippling. Cost of living is that constant family member that wears down and leaves weeping in his or her wake. Like drug addiction, it is draining and damaging. The weaknesses brought about by cost of living blows are not self-inflicted. Guyanese keep shortening their needs as part of their compulsory adjustments, but with little relief. Guyanese live more within their means, only to discover that the more they roll themselves into a tight ball, the more that prices close in on them; the more tensions become intolerable, unable to be held longer.
Try this thought that surfaced. If there is one thing on which working class Guyanese, minimum wage Guyanese workers, and Guyanese pension recipients can agree on, it is that the cost of living is an undiscriminating torturer. If cost of living was a political party, it would be a winner. SN goes to a community where respondents are largely Guyanese of Indian extraction, and the song is the same: cost of living is killing.
SN speaks to a village of mainly Guyanese of African descent, and it’s the same wail of anguish: cost of living is hurting, hurting, hurting…. SN touches down in a remote region, and the indigenous welcoming party cries like those with holes in their stomach and pains in the gut: cost of living is tapeworm roundworm, ringworm. There is none of the usual fierce, prejudiced partisanship that destroys Guyana, when cost of living is the subject that’s on the table, extracts comments on conditions encountered daily. What self-serving politicians do not want to do, cost of living does to Guyanese: unite that mass at the bottom of the oil (economic) world of Guyana.
Their gnawing and unrelenting cost of living pangs are apolitical, which is the first miracle. Cost of living boasts a biracial complexion, which is the second. Cost of living conditions, being without basic food items on a rolling basis, have no heroes. Cost of living only have those who are grimacing from the pain that living and scrambling to find the next meal has become. Plus, what is needed for the next week’s rations. Plus, what must be had to make good on the next month’s bills. Some of those may be dodged from or delayed. All cannot be ducked from, or disowned, too long.
These ordinary Guyanese, local voter fodder, weren’t listened to, but used and misused, as always. Now, there is grudging acknowledgement that their situation is both piercing and hazardous. The cost-of-living hurting hear that relief is on the way. Since then, they have stopped their ears from hearing anything else. Their minds are firmly and immovably fixed on money. They don’t give a damn about who is now getting up and going after gold smuggling, and who suddenly found their voice. Where is the money? How much money is it? When is the money coming? Cost of living sufferers have the scantest interest in lavish speeches. They primary interest is in having something more in their hands, so that they can have a little something more to put in their pot. All else is fluff. Cost of living in Guyana is that ruff.
