With this week marking the first 100 days of the new PPP/C government, Vice President (VP) Bharrat Jagdeo yesterday said the new administration was hamstrung from hitting the ground running due to the absence of a budget.
At a press conference at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre yesterday, the VP told reporters that the country seemed to be at a standstill up until the PPP/C took over the administration some five months after the March 2nd elections. “It seems like five years we just stood still as a country,” he said, while describing the former APNU+AFC administration’s tenure.
Although Tuesday marked 100 days since Irfaan Ali was sworn in, Jagdeo argued that the PPP/C has only been effectively in power for around 40 days. Working with no budget for the first month and having liabilities amounting to over $2 billion and in the midst of a pandemic, Jagdeo said, the new government could not fully function until September when the appropriation bill was approved.
He added that the administration has faced many difficulties, including tackling the local effects of the global pandemic, which by the time the party entered office had started to spread to all ten of the administrative regions.
With little testing being done and a lockdown enforced under the former administration, Jagdeo claimed that the country was not in any way prepared to tackle COVID-19, especially as it was anticipated to escalate once the country started returning to normalcy.
He added that since the PPP/C took office, there have been disclosures about projects that were stalled while others were being negotiated but not properly planned, all of which the administration quickly took over and started reviewing in an effort to have them completed.
He also mentioned ongoing engagements between government ministers and the people and he charged that it was something that the now opposition barely did while in office. He called it a commitment that the government intends to continue, in spite of the risks faced by the threat of the coronavirus. He further said that these are the risks both the ministers and the Guyanese are willing to take to ensure that the nation’s issues are heard and resolved.
