President Irfaan Ali yesterday said that the $100,000 cash grant will be paid to most persons here before Christmas with pensioners and public servants poised to get theirs by the end of this month.
In the hinterland, work has already begun with creating their datasets and theirs will be speedily paid, the President said.
“Before the end of the month, the existing datasets [for pensioners and public servants] their cheque will be cut easily because their dataset is already there. This weekend, they will be in Region 9 collecting the datasets from Region 9, working with all the toshaos …the hinterland regions we will try to complete as quickly as possible because the coast we can easily work with,” the President yesterday said when asked by Stabroek News during a new interview programme that was launched by the Office of the President.
“Yes… you would get your money before Christmas,” he added.
According to Ali, a key prerequisite is data collection and that is in the works. “So you had to get a system to collect the data, to cut the cheque , we already had raw datasets like all public service employees and then you have all pensioners. Tomorrow morning we can cut the cheque for all of them.”
The President said that training has been ongoing for persons who head into the hinterland to collect data from citizens there. And when the teams are done training and go out into the fields, they will be doing so with electronic devices with special data applications which they will bring back to the city to store and set the process for payment.
“The training has been ongoing for persons who go in the regions and collect the data. For example this weekend we will be in Region 9 to get all the information… the ID cards [etcetera]. When all of that is done, it goes into an app electronically. So they have their tablets, they go into the field…in two days [they can] register them and then all the cheques will be cut in the system and then you go back out with the first list [of payments]. So you are building accountability, transparency, involvement. Involvement and at national level, the regional level and you are effectively and effectively build the system out,” Ali explained.
He continued, “In Region 9 the app will be up and running and of course before the end of the month, the easy datasets like public servants and pensioners and all of that will be easily paid off”.
The government settled on providing a cash grant of $100,000 to every Guyanese over the age of 18, including those resident overseas, who would have to be in the country at the time of distribution to collect it. To be eligible for the grant, recipients will have to show proof of Guyanese citizenship by way of a national identification card or Guyana passport.
Strategy
And when asked by Stabroek News about criticisms that the change within days from his announced $200,000 per household to $100,000 per adult citizen was indicative that there was no planning by his government, he said it not only showed proper planning but demonstrated that he led a democratic Cabinet that listens to the people of the country.
“When I announced in parliament $200,000 per household, we had a very clear defined strategy as to how the $200,000 would be disbursed. That is why I could have given an estimation of the cost. After the announcement of the strategy, like a democratic government, like strong good leadership, we evaluated the impact of the policy and that is part of policy framing and policy making,” he reasoned.
“We evaluated the impact of the policy and in evaluating the impact …some people, journalists; young journalists approached the Vice President and said to him ‘We are young professionals who delayed family planning …and are we going to be penalized’…So like a good Cabinet that does its analytical work…we listened to feedback,” he added.
Ali said that his government learned that persons were also trying to create households to cash in as they seemingly determined that “for us to be part of this thing, we have to create a household. We have to create conditions under which we will be considered a household,” he said.
To be an effective leader, he said that one has to listen to feedback from the people and make necessary adjustments, action he believes shows strength and not weakness or poor planning.
“To avoid all of that, like a good team, we decided that the more effective approach would then be to give $100,000. And it takes courageous leadership, it takes sensible leadership, responsible leadership, it takes dignified leadership, not people trying to steal elections…,” he posited while taking a swipe at the Opposition over the attempt to rig the 2020 General Elections
“It takes dignified leadership to say to the public we know this going on. Because you have to be plugged in…to the reality of what people say and the impact. We were able to aggressively respond with a policy that brought greater satisfaction. At the end of the day the policy is to bring (a) greater level of satisfaction. Before that policy, not by accident, we had already started to work on the mechanism to deliver this, because as far as possible we want this to be done by cheque,” he added.
Government has said that while no “special” legislation will be put in place for the planned disbursement to all adults it will be covered by a supplementary appropriation in Parliament.
“I said we are not going to pass a special act called (a) cash grant act. If we had to do that we would have had to pass one for the business grant and everything. It is all covered under the FMAA and also under these special acts that emanate from the constitutional process of appropriating funds. So they have legislative approval. The 60 billion (dollars) or whatever it comes up to (for the $100,000 grant) will go to the parliament; there will be a full debate there, and then once it’s passed it will be put into a supplementary act, assented to by the president, published in the Official Gazette, and then the funds would be available”, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo had last week told a press conference.
Meanwhile, Ali also made clear yesterday that the cash grant will in no way affect public servants’ retroactive salary increases or Christmas bonuses to the Joint Services.
He said that there are ways in which misinformation and AI (Artificial Intelligence) work. “The design of that message that is out there is to create negatively of something. I have already said that the public servants will be paid out, retroactive. The Joint Services we reintroduced their bonus. We don’t take away benefits we give benefits. That would be paid out. The public servants increases are definitely going to come…long before the end of the year and that is separate and apart from the $100,000 cash grant,” the President said.
