Dear Editor,
Guyanese may be glad to hear of the PPP’s recent announcement of the $200,000 one-off payment for families among other `prags’. It must have taken quite a bit of pain on the PPP’s part to come up with such a package (given the annual fights they’ve had with our unions) that is sure to bring some short-term relief to families and other beneficiaries. One can imagine that they were embarrassed at having their proverbial pants pulled down over revelations that by not renegotiating the Exxon contract they were giving Exxon approximately US$28-49 billion of your money over the life of the project, compared with what you got with their existing programme of US$200 for school children (if your babies don’t go to school you had nothing to get).
The announced $200,000 per family (please note this is just a one-off payment to boost their image) plus the $10,000/per child tax credit (you still have to live with the pain of meeting daily family expenses, so it’s difficult to see the immediate benefits of this), etc., move the benefits needle per family to a minimum of just under US$1,000 ($200,000/208) from the US$200 per school child. This however still pales when compared to the approximately US$1.5 billion to US$2.5 billion or more of your money Exxon will be getting every year. You get a US$1,000 one-off payment this year plus some `prags’, Exxon gets around US$1.5-2.5 Billion every year! The PPP is giving serious amounts of our money, our wealth, to Exxon, while throwing bread crumbs at us. Please refer to www.dncgy.com /
Yours faithfully,
Craig Sylvester,
Party Leader, DNC