According to Jaipaul Sharma, the Minister of Finance, Winston Jordan is a wizard who has led the way in the new administration’s quest to walk the walk and talk the talk.
Sharma, the Minister within the Ministry of Finance, during Monday’s budget debate referred to the Opposition’s claims that “the minister played a clever sleight of hand… duped the people.” He noted that the opposition inferred that the minister was some kind of wizard. This he said was perhaps accurate as it would “take an extraordinary person to deal with the mess he inherited from the previous government.”
Sharma in his presentation in support of the Budget said that the Budget has offered hope to several senior citizens who had previously faced humiliation as they were unable to take care of themselves.
But this was not enough for People’s Progressive Party/Civic Member of Parliament Ganga Persaud. Persaud lambasted the ruling APNU+AFC government for failing to live up to demands they had made of the last government when they were in the opposition.
Persaud spent his presentation reminiscing. “I will remind many of us in this house of what we said during budget 2014,” he told the house.
He cited statements made by MPs Cathy Hughes, Keith Scott and Valerie Garrido-Lowe during the 2014 Budget debates.
Hughes is quoted as stating that a proposed increase in pensions of $625 “will not cover the cost of the grill work they [the pensioners] will need to install to protect themselves in this new Guyana, this was made evident by recent attacks on two pensioners who lost their lives.”
It has worsened today, Persaud stressed. He later referenced Scott and Garrido-Low who had called for a pension of $20,000 or half the amount of the minimum wage respectively.
Apparently, Persaud charged, the honourable member Minister Jordan didn’t read these statements.
