Embattled former Minister of Health Bheri Ramsaran yesterday criticized the government for its scrapping of the scandal-plagued Specialty Hospital initiated by the previous PPP/C government.
Making his contribution to the 2015 Budget debate, Ramsaran questioned government’s decision to scrap projects in the heath sector including the specialty hospital. According to Ramsaran, every transformative project embarked on by the former PPP/C government was pillaged by the persons who now make up the APNU+AFC government including the specialty hospital which was erased from the 2015 budget.
“What a shame, what a shame,” he said even as he declared the scrapping as myopic and as vindictiveness overcoming reason and enlightenment especially when over US$4M has been invested in the project. “1800 pile strips driven and a lot of other preparatory works [have] already [been] done, why should we want to abandon US$4M in the ground? What are we going to do with this?” Ramsaran asked.
The PPP/C government had filed a lawsuit against the specialty hospital contractor Surendra Engineering last October after accusing the firm of fraud and breach of contract. It was a major embarrassment for the PPP/C administration, which had used Surendra for several major contracts, including the troubled Enmore packaging plant, and had been accused of favouring it in the US$18M Specialty Hospital contract.
Ramsaran yesterday asserted that the 2015 Budget should have said “specialty hospital plus” and the new government should have said “not only will we complete this project but we will outdo the PPP/C.”
He said that he was one of the main authors of the new government’s Health Vision 2020, and claimed that the APNU+AFC government had been “handed a robust health sector” but is now in the process of dismantling certain aspects of the ministry which has resulted in harm to the Guyanese public especially potentially to women.
Ramsaran proposed representation of Guyanese women was met with incredulous exclamations of “what!” from several members of the House. He is presently before the courts on a charge of using insulting language after he threatened to slap and strip woman activist Sherlina Nageer.
The heckling did not deter the MP. In a similar manner, his PPP colleague Africo Selman faced a barrage of heckling from the government side of the house as she made her contribution to the debate. In the last general elections, Selman jumped ship from the then opposition APNU to become a member the PPP/C.
“I have the right to choose which political party I want to associate with and I have chosen to bear allegiance to this nation under the PPP and that is my right,” Selman declared as she began her speech. Refusing to acknowledge calls of ‘Miss Opposition,’ Selman asserted that though the Budget theme, ‘A Good Life in a Green Economy’ offers hope, it does not keep the promises made by the ruling party.
Despite the hope of a reduction in the Value Added Tax (VAT), Guyanese are still saddled with the tax, she said, while adding that there were no consultations on the items which have been zero-rated. Selman stressed that any functioning democracy demands consultation and the government should abandon their practice of acting without consultation.
She further claimed that protests for reconsideration of the scrapped $10,000 cash grant fell on deaf ears. “The question that must be asked is whether ignoring the plight of the poor guarantees a fresh approach to a good life,” she said.
Selman particularly attacked junior Social Protection Minister Simona Broomes who, she said, appears to be the ‘Champion of the disadvantaged’ for not unveiling a package to compensate for the withdrawal of the $10,000 cash grant. According to the MP, if the government intends to ensure that Budget 2015 truly reflects a good life for all Guyanese then they must take on board recommendations from the opposition side of the house.
Broomes, for her part, chose to highlight the plight of Guyanese workers under the “outrageous and uncaring policies and decisions” of the previous government.
She spoke of the ten miners who lost their lives in Region 8 recently when the mine they were working in, collapsed on them. This she stressed, was a result of a lack of social protection, “a deficiency [which] must and will be changed” through adherence to local laws and international conventions and charters.
