PNCR leader Robert Corbin yesterday accused the ruling party of creating a slush fund for electioneering with the recent moves to secure billions of dollars for the housing sector—a charge that PPP General Secretary Donald Ramotar has firmly rejected.
“Let me first of all deny that outright and say that Mr. Corbin seems to be fishing for something to try to promote his political fortune which seems to have been in a nose-dive for a while now,” Ramotar told Stabroek News in an interview.
Corbin made the statement at the PNCR’s year end news briefing at Congress Place and referred to Thursday’s parliamentary sitting where a $3B supplementary allocation was approved for the housing sector, pushing the supplementary total to some $6.7B this year in addition to the $680M budget allocation.
According to the PNCR leader, the only conclusion that could be drawn from the “non-answers” provided by Housing Minister Irfaan Ali during Thursday’s debate on how the money would be spent is that the PPP was building “a political slush fund” for electioneering. “There’re no details to it but when you here some of the streets that the minister spoke about it is clear that it is election allocation,” Corbin added.
The PNCR leader said the projects listed by the minister do not fall under his portfolio but rather that of the works ministry and its roads division in particular.
However, Ramotar sought to defend his colleague saying that he was prevented by the Speaker from elaborating on where the money would be spent. “The Minister of Housing yesterday (Thursday) was beginning to read out the list of roads that was going to be made in almost every region of this country when the Speaker mentioned it would be taking too long,” he said. According to Ramotar, the fact that the list taken to parliament shows that the money was going to roads in the housing developments is an indicator that the intention is to provide people with a better quality of life. Corbin was also displeased with the manner in which the government has gone about plans to establish a remigrant scheme at Providence without parliamentary discussions. “It is rather … disturbing that the government would seek to embark on such major exercises without the National Assembly of the parliament that is responsible for scrutinising … being aware of the full scope of these plans,” he said. He noted that the PNCR has no problem with encouraging remigration as a policy position since it has also called for that but it was the lack of transparency in the way state resources are being utilised that is cause for concern. “At least the parliament ought to be … aware and that’s why you have a budget and an estimate and you have project profiles, all that is developed so one can scrutinise and monitor what is being done. What we are seeing are more or less cloak and dagger operations with the taxpayers’ money,” Corbin stated. To this Ramotar responded that he “supposed” information on those expenditures would be forthcoming in the future. “The government has announced something but that doesn’t mean that everything is in place as they still have a lot of I’s to dot and T’s to cross so I’m not ruling out that something like that would probably come later on,” Ramotar said.
Ali on Wednesday revealed that some 1,000 of 15,000 house lots to be developed on the East Bank Demerara will go towards establishing a high-end housing development at Providence for overseas-based Guyanese looking to resettle.
