With President Irfaan Ali’s failure to so far deliver on his promise to Guyanese of a cash grant in time for the Christmas season, APNU Member of Parliament and co-leader of the Working People’s Alliance (WPA), Dr David Hinds is warning the government against playing citizens for fools.
The political leader is also advancing that the Irfaan Ali administration put in place a legal, structured framework that would see Guyanese receiving a sustained systematic income.
“Cash transfers can be sustained when they are structured , when they are done by law, when people can plan their lives expecting this income. This supplemental income. This universal income. This cash transfer, from the perspective of the WPA and APNU is not a freck, it is an income, a supplemental income,” Dr Hinds said Monday, during his appearance on “MP morning with Dr David Hinds”, on KAMS TV.
During that online discussion, the political commentator had urged listeners to join a planned APNU protest against the government Monday morning, over its reluctance to deliver on a promise made during its election campaign. Dr Hinds said for government to renege on its promise is a “cardinal sin in politics and a cardinal sin in life.”
“We are in solidarity with the people. We are saying the government promised us this thing and we expect to get it, but we are also going out to demonstrate and make the point that the way the PPP is doing this cash grant is hurting people, because you end up with people planning their lives, expecting this thing and you are not likely to give them , you have no intention to give them.”
Dr Hinds explained that while the PPP is comfortable distributing cash grants at its own convenience, cash transfers, as put forward by the Working People’s Alliance, will ensure Guyanese are financially secured from profits of its oil resources.
“For us, the cash transfer is a means to an end. It is not about giving people money to buy rum and so on, it is a means to an end to lift them out of impoverish conditions. We would prefer it to say look, at the end of the year, or in the budget, we are going to say, there is so much money that we have gotten from, or expected to get from oil, and we are going to divide that money among the population or households. We feel the best way to do that is to make it systematic.”
In this regard, he argued that the system must be made law. “We are going to demonstrate to say to the government that we want this thing to be structured; to be done by law, we want to know in advance that we are getting this added income”
He continued, “We have to begin to make the government a structured initiative. Cash transfer must be structured because it is a basic income.”
