Dear Editor,
It is still in the center pages of SN; this Monday was stanza 54 in the long-running cost-of-living tragedy. Considering the number, this revealing coverage has been going for over a year now; unless SN squeezed 54 weeks in this year so far, with still one more left. Or is it two? Whatever it is, 54 episodes of the struggles of Guyanese all over with cost-of-living has made for a gory story. When I think of where Guyana is today, and how it is the subject of endless encomia from everybody, this conclusion is arrived at: the government and its leaders could be legitimately accused of wreaking violence on the ordinary man and woman in Guyana. Depraved indifference is what I observe, read, to the plight of the common citizen.
To those who point to subsidies, $25,000, child cash grant, a cash grant for geriatrics, and 6.5%, I extend this little invitation: try the math. It is not advanced calculus, just simple arithmetic. Revealing would be the percentage of the national budget earmarked for a helping hand to all. I stretch matters by including farmers and sugar. I go wider, and ask for some disclosure about how much of the almost GY$200 billion taken out of the Oil Fund was specifically set aside for relief for suffering citizens. Those who excel in extolling the virtues of the multiplier effect and the velocity of money are lauded. But I have two cautions to offer: doesn’t make a damn difference to man staring at an empty plate, a mother having to bite her lip, and check her tears when a child (hers) asks for a little more: a slice of bread, or a small spoon of rice.
The second is that the macros might be impressive, but climb down from that horse living in an air conditioned and well-stocked ivory tower and deal with the microorganisms that I describe as the small man and the dispirited mother. While Vice President Jagdeo’s people talk about graphs and curves, and sketch all kinds of scenarios, there are zillions of Guyanese bent double by the brutalities of daily and weekly cost-of-living battles. Jagdeo expounds on what is not “sustainable” and he has a point to a point. What this national leader with such weight finds convenient to give short thrift to is that while he pontificates about “sustainable” Guyanese are scratching around for the barest sustenance to manage their day, and coming up short.
Here is a note that has its own melody. Taking the 54 weeks of SN’s cost-of-living series, and using the norm of 10 citizens telling their situation that is 540 badly hurting Guyanese in a country that everybody wants a piece of, and the bigger the better. This is while cost-of-living is chopping Guyanese to pieces. Of that 540 pained Guyanese, I am yet to come across 10 or 15 Guyanese, who are comfortable about where and how they are. Meaning that they can afford, therefore they are managing with the dignity becoming the people that the world and the World Bank say. When there is less than 5%, maybe as low as 2%, of those spoken to by SN, who say they are good, then that means as much as 95 to 98% of the villagers and urban dwellers interviewed are on the outside of those gaudy local and foreign numbers. It would be interesting as to what that extrapolates into at the broader and deeper levels.
Last, government has a liking for cash grants. When I hear talk about cash distributions in Guyana, and government involved (any), I ask myself why this fascination with liquid cash, and what political and official addictions are involved. The tax system looks like it could be reprogrammed for what is “sustainable” to borrow the wise man’s word. Give the people something monthly, some combination that improves their lot. A quick aside: it seems that the more subsidies that farmers get, the more the price of market stuff goes up. The government says that it is watching inflationary stirrings how hawkish Paul Volker and virtuoso Alan Greenspan did. Yet it is unresponsive to the inflation of corruption from all that budget and oil money poured into infrastructure. When I take all of this in with C-o-L, I recommend a COI to unravel the mysteries and locate the viruses in this national embarrassment. Now that not a blade of grass has taken a temporary holiday, there should be a new battle song. Not one Guyanese hungry.
Sincerely,
GHK Lall
