The 2025 elections approach and those political parties committed to the development of open and just democratic society should take on board all three of the issues addressed below.
Over the last 25 years, particularly as its ethnic majority began to wane, the oligarchy that controls the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) has deliberately suffocated every area of social life over which Africans have had any meaningful control in order to bend them to its political will. The standard of living of public servants – mainly Africans – has also been targeted and severely negatively affected by the PPP’s amoral and illegal refusal to follow the principles of proper collective bargaining in order to impoverish Africans and force them into its ranks.
The resources that have been deliberately extracted from public servants by the PPP should, therefore, not be forgotten but should be properly assessed by an inclusive independent body and returned, with interest, to public servants or their heirs. The fact that the resulting sum might be enormous is totally irrelevant, for the PPP has severely decapitalised African Guyanese. Further, governments must come to understand that they cannot without serious consequences illegally use the state to punish sections of the population that do not to succumb to their political will.
When the PPP came to government in 1992, the public service unions were demanding compensation from the previous People’s National Congress (PNC) government for the hardship that resulted from its imposition of the Economic Recovery Programme (ERP). In the years between 1980 and 1989 ,money wages increased from $11.55 per day, rising to about $35.89 per day. But taking $4.00 a day which was paid in 1970 as the base, real wages, which were $4.38 in 1980 had been reduced to $1.49 in 1989 and to only $0.85 by the end of 1990. Retrieving this ‘labour debt’ was one of the major goals of the public service unions.
Throughout his time in government after 1992, Cheddi Jagan tried his best to address this ‘labour debt’. Immediately upon coming to government in April 1993, the public service minimum wage was increased to $174.17 from 1 July 1992 and to $191 from 1 January 1993. The real value of the minimum wage at the end of December 1992 was $1.44: an increase of 69% over the low of $0.85 in 1990. Jagan also accepted the formula that public service wages should be calculated based upon the rate of inflation plus growth in the economy. But he died, and around the turn of the century, his successors discarded the formula and collective bargaining and deliberately went about imposing salary increases that barely covered the rate of inflation.
That the PPP has deliberately set about decreasing the income of public servants is without doubt. For example, the APNU+AFC Coalition came to government in 2015 and attempted to gradually redress this injustice in its normal piecemeal, ahistorical, fashion. But immediately upon returning to government in 2020, the PPP restarted its programme of pauperising Africans and enhancing the financial position of its own supporters.
While between 2020, when the APNU+AFC coalition left office ,and 2023, central government expenditure as a percent of GDP had declined from 28.4% to 24.6%, current expenditure declined from 21.7% to 10.8%. Importantly, wages and salaries of public sector workers declined from 6.3% to 3.1% but capital expenditure moved from 6.7% in 2020 to 13.4 percent in 2023. Continuing this trend, the 2024 budget increased the recurrent spending by 109% but capital expenditure by 905%. Indians control the private sector and gain the bulk of government contracts. Therefore, what the Indian community loses by being a part of the public service is more than compensated for by their being dominant in the private sector.
The IMF assessed that the 2022 end of year inflation rate would have been 9.4% but until it was checkmated, the PPP had decided to pay an 8% increase for 2022 to the public servants. This was not, however, considered sufficient to stem the out-migration of educated Guyanese and so the regime was prevailed upon and returned with increases for health workers of between 13% to 74% of their minimum wages in the new year and the USA ambassador publicly thanked it!
When we come to teachers, a similar trend exists. For example, according to the CIA Fact Book, Guyana’s GDP is about US$50,000, but since most of the oil profits go to the oil companies, it is best to use the GNI (Gross Nation Income), which is placed at about US$30,000. Saudi Arabia has a GDP of US$31, 000 per annum and in 2023 the average teacher’s salary was about US$36,000 per annum. Portugal has a GDP per capita of about US$30,000 and the average teacher’s salary is about US$18,000 per annum. The GDP per capita in Lithuania in 2024 was US$30,000 and the average teacher’s salary was about US$12,000 per annum. Guyana has a GNI of US$30,000 and the average annual teacher’s salary is only about US$6,500 per annum.
Forgetting the victim of state behaviour happened before in African history when the British colonial authorities compensated the slave owners but failed to adequately recompense the slaves with all manner of negative consequences, and today there is the demand for reparations. The PPP must not in this the 21st century be allowed to get away with its deliberate efforts to pauperise modern African Guyanese, and fair compensation is the most appropriate response to its inhuman behaviour.
Related to the above, one reason the PPP has gotten away with this politically motivated inhumanity is because the public does not have access to sensible disaggregated data based upon race/ethnicity. Notwithstanding all the ethnic problems Guyana faces, the political elite is locked into a nonsensical assimilationist time capsule. For this reason, the ‘Ethnic Disparity Audit and Rectification Initiative’ now being championed by IDPAD-G is very important.
‘Guyana’s multiethnic society’, it argues, ‘continues to grapple with entrenched disparities in access to public services, resource allocation, and socioeconomic opportunities. The proposed Ethnic Disparity Audit, led by IDPADA-G and proposed for implementation under the mandate of the Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC), aims to objectively identify and quantify ethnic disparities in key sectors—laying the foundation for targeted policy reform and long-term national cohesion.’ The objective is to collect, analyse, and publish disaggregated data on ethnic disparities across Guyana’s public and private sectors, enabling evidence-based policies that promote equity and inclusion.
IDPADA-G noted that ‘persistent allegations of ethnic discrimination remain a source of mistrust and social division, Guyana lacks publicly available, disaggregated data to assess disparities or track corrective progress, the initiative aligns with the mandates of the UN International Decade for People of African Descent and the SDGs’ call to “leave no one behind” and will focus on Governance, public sector employment, health, education, housing, land allocation, contracting, law enforcement, income distribution, and access to justice.’
Importantly, the permissive nature of the political system Guyana inherited from the British, which depends a great deal on tradition, precedents, etc., when coupled to their domineering intent has helped the autocrats in the PPP to capture the state and do what they are doing. If Guyana is to avoid dictatorial regimes and develop into a progressive liberal democratic state, the first order of business of any new government should be constitutional reforms to introduce political structures that are more inclusive. For years this has been the argument of this column and others and while it needed to be restated, needless to say it will be extremely foolhardy to expect any positive response from the PPP.
