I have been missing for a while because of personal commitments. Last week I was travelling and this week I am late because I had a doctor’s appointment when I should have been broadcasting.
The bottom line is that I am back. A lot has been happening since my last notebook. Azruddin Mohamed was sworn in as opposition leader; the budget was presented and the debates have begun.
As could be expected, this budget is by far the largest but it offers nothing for poverty relief. People continue to live in abject poverty. The Inter-American Development Bank places Guyana’s poverty level at 58 per cent with 38 per cent living in abject poverty.
Despite the rising cost of living there has been no financial relief for public servants. They are getting a pittance for a pay increase.
Senior citizens have been offered a further five thousand dollars a month and the social assistance recipients should get a further $3,000 a month.
The madness does not end there. There is talk of infrastructure development but the beneficiaries are foreigners and large companies closely associated with the government. Employment for the many ordinary workers is not guaranteed.
Billions of dollars are being spent on education but the returns on those expenditures are moving in the opposite direction. Just two days ago there was a clip on social media where a Barbadian was boasting about Barbadians being the most literate people in the region.
That was a claim made by Guyana long before there was the discovery of oil. Guyana’s literacy rate was higher than ninety per cent. One would shudder to think what it is today. The evidence is clear. Hundreds of young people are on the streets with nothing to do.
Many would not recognize their names if they see them in print.
The enterprising few set up roadside stalls or simply become hucksters peddling low cost items. More often than not they would have problems calculating their proceeds. But these are not the only ones. Thanks to the smart phones these days there are calculators.
Communication is perhaps the most potent example of the level of literacy. When one checks the social media posts one sees what passes for the language. Forget grammar and spelling. The level of understanding is sadly lacking. But the 2026 Budget has a lot of money going to education. And this is outside the capital works.
At one time, the late Forbes Burnham advocated that Guyanese should feed, house and clothes themselves. The feeding part of the motto came easily; clothing became a problem because efforts to produce clothing material were ridiculed and eventually scrapped by the government.
Housing that should have been relatively easy given the ready access to most of the building material is going nowhere. Guyana forgot its wood because people claimed that wood was too expensive so there was the switch to concrete.
Guyana has an abundance of sand and stone but the price keeps rising. In the face of stagnant wages owning a home became an almost impossible dream.
In the budget the government announced how many house lots it distributed. Member of Parliament Sherod Duncan quoted the government figures of 53,000 house lot allocations. Great. But of this number only 25,000 became titled lands. Silence on the remaining 28,000 house lots.
These are people who cannot approach the banks for loans to facilitate construction. But the situation became worse when the Minister of Amerindian Affairs announced that 16,000 titles were issued in the hinterland.
Money has been allocated to construct low cost houses but what is being touted as low cost is turning out to be very expensive because each house constructed by the government contractors requires a lot of remedial work. And the final cost is handed to the potential homeowner.
It was a laugh when Duncan said that some of the houses are so small that people have to exit to turn around then re-enter.
At the same time mansions are being constructed by people associated with the ruling party. The national slogan is no longer One Guyana but Two Guyanas.
The people in the hinterland are condemned to a life of poverty. They do not earn as much as their counterparts on the cost but the cost of living there is four times higher. A cylinder of cooking gas that costs $4,500 on the coast costs $16,000 in the hinterland.
Transportation for schoolchildren has been abandoned. The David Granger administration had buses collecting children for school similar to the school bus programme in the United States. This government killed it. There is now the case where many children simply cannot go to school.
Does anyone dare question the decline in education in Guyana?
Money is there. And so is the madness. President Irfaan Ali had spoken about clamping down on drivers’ licenses fraudulently obtained. Nothing has been done so far. Two heavy trucks rolled down the Bharrat Jagdeo Demerara River Bridge.
One was driven by an unlicensed driver. It killed a motorist. Days later, another rolled down the bridge. Fortunately, it killed no one but it snarled traffic. This need not have happened had the government not been in so much haste to eradicate Burnham from history.
The government almost immediately shut down the old river bridge. Everyone knows that had the bridge still been in operation the traffic woes would not have materialized. Instead of trucks rolling back down the new structure they could have safely used the old bridge as they once did.
I have seen locations in other countries where trucks are barred from certain thoroughfares. Guyana could have been in a similar position but for the shortsighted and vindictive nature of the government.
So we have money but in the haste to spend, a lot is being squandered. The gas to energy project is just one case. Not much has been said about this by the opposition in parliament but billions of dollars have been wasted here.
The wastage has been quantified. One speaker said that the wastage on one particular road construction could have allowed for senior citizens to receive hundreds of dollars per month for five years. The situation is enough to make one cry.
