Dear Editor,
Transfer payments have systemic implications for the nation’s economy. If done recklessly, it can inject great harm. If one is to observe the actions by Team Granger since coming to office in May 2015, this is exactly what they did – recklessly transfer funds out of the Treasury.
The graph below illustrates how the annual transfer payments from the central government to a variety of agencies (both locally and overseas) went up by an aggregated value of some G$107 billion since the March 2015. In layman’s language Team Granger met a budget that was transferring G$31 billion from the Treasury and went on to stack-up on top of that a further G$107 billion between March 2015 and March 2020. That is more than two and half times the March 2015 transfers. This begs the question to whom are these transfers being made?
Well they are not being made to GuySuCo, since Team Granger severed some 6,000 sugar workers, and then sliced the transfers made under the PPP/C from $6 billion in 2014 to zero as at the end of 2019. Upon drilling down you find a menu of strange organizations turning up on the radar.
Let us reflect on one agency for instance – the National Data Management Authority (NDMA). In 2014, some $33 million was transferred to this agency. Over the last 5 years, there was a 5,500% increase in transfers to $1,848 million. If you peruse the Ministry of Public Telecommunication website, you find that the NDMA is tasked with advising the Minister on data processing among some other opaque deliverables.
We are told by the NDMA that they are using this money to operationalize the EGovernance network, but today not a single Guyanese can apply for their birth certificates, driver’s licenses, or pay a police traffic ticket on-line. So what EGovernance platform are they talking about that is costing the taxpayers all these billions? Mind you in other countries, these sorts of transactions are elementary stuff but in Guyana, it is a multi-billion project with very little evidence of the output.
If one further interrogates these numbers they will find that some $100 million was allocated for the Decade of African People in 2019. While any spending on projects that uplift our people is important, this style of picking and choosing who is in need of transfers is discriminatory and unfair. What about the Amerindian people who are statistically the poorest in this land, where is there $100 million? What about the people who are squatting on the river dam in plastic houses on the West Bank of Demerara from Vive-La-Force to Wales/Patentia? What about the now-fired sugar workers at Wales Estate many of who are in depression and still have not found full-time employment?
I was at the Wales/Patentia area last Sunday as part of a team distributing hampers to ex-sugar workers on behalf of the National Covid-19 Taskforce established by Dr. Irfaan Ali and the level of poverty that I observed seems to have expanded many times since I last visited that area. But this is the mentality of the suit and tie boys and girls in Congress Place; they have little money for the poor and the most vulnerable but lots of money for advisory services on data processes and overseas conferences for the inner circle in the Granger cabal. This is the principal reason why they lost the elections; they are out-of-touch with the anxieties of the common man. It is always about their personal pocket and their propaganda.
And as we are on the topic of propaganda, Team Granger has increased the transfers from the Central Government Budget to their propaganda machine in NCN/DPI by 125% over the last 5 years to $497 million. Can you imagine these people have almost half a billion for propaganda and too little cash for face masks to save the lives of our people and too little cash for food hampers to feed our people in this COVID-19 crisis? Is this what the next Government of Guyana should look like?
Never!
As a people, we must combat this corrupt attitude of minds that resides in Team Granger in the mountains, on the coastlands, on the streets, and as Winston Churchill advised us “we shall never surrender”.
Yours faithfully,
Sasenarine Singh
