Region 10 is “breathing a breath of fresh air” with the end of the PPP/C’s rule, according to regional parliamentarian Jermaine Figueira, who on Tuesday accused the former government of stifling the region and mismanagement.
“Speak youth! Speak youth!” fellow government parliamentarians chanted during Figueira’s presentation on the proposed national budget in the National Assembly on Tuesday.
“[We] were [in a] chokehold by the previous administration,” he said, before adding that the people of the region were “battered and beaten but never broken for 23 years because we exercised our democratic right to vote for who we wanted as leaders.”
Figueira added that the people of Region 10 have an “indomitable spirit of optimism” since the “fishbone in our throat has been removed and that monkey is no longer on our backs.”
He noted that Region 10 desires to “become a region that is independent and self-sufficient… [and to] be the leader in creating employment opportunities for Guyanese and provide a skilled work force to meet the demands of vast development Guyana will be experiencing.”
Figueira, who at 32 is the youngest APNU+AFC government parliamentarian, sought to reassure that the administration cares for youth. He added that his presence in the Assembly reflected “the real youth of Guyana that is not connected or aligned to the hierarchy of party leadership.”
Figueira recalled the PPP/C being the only government that he had known as a youth and noted that under its 23-year-long stewardship of the nation Guyana has seen one of the highest percentages of youth unemployment. “Since 2000 (Guyana) has constantly been above 30%… and 89% of tertiary-level graduates who leave their country (Guyana) in search of jobs elsewhere,” he added. He also highlighted the country’s alarming suicide rate and pointed out to PPP/C member Charles Ramson Jnr that those “statistics and unwanted realities all existed under the 23 years’ rule of the PPP/C administration.”
Figueira added that the PPP/C is “now pretending to have all the answers… having squandered their many opportunities with profound mismanagement and ineptness.” He furthered stated that the opposition while in government became “disconnected” from the citizenry and “ill-conceived and voodoo projects” were the order of the day.
He stated that the national priority is now to secure foreign exchange, stimulate economic growth, tackle crime and violence, and service the large inherited debt. Towards this end, he said the budget makes provision for young people in the form of incentives, such as tax exemptions to medium and small-scale miners from paying custom duties on fuels, ATVs, engines, and pumps, among other things. He stated that many of the people in the mining sector are young people and will benefit from these “common sense incentives.”
