Dear Editor,
As a parliamentary political party and member of APNU the WPA is not aware when ex-president Bharrat Jagdeo became the spokesperson for the Ramotar government on financial management. At a recent press conference the former head of government revealed inside knowledge of the alleged reason for the irregular, unlawful and fictional arrangement between the Central Housing & Planning Authority and the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission regarding a matter of a $3 billion loan to the housing authority.
Our information is that the information about this came from the very institutions. One of our MPs, Brother Desmond Trotman moved to the courts through his counsel Attorney-at-Law Christopher Ram on the basis of the legality which MPs are sworn to uphold.
Rather than suggesting that the opposition parties were callous about the fate of a massive entity like GuySuCo, if Mr Jagdeo can find it in himself to be truthful, he should admit that the whole opposition in the Tenth Parliament supported the request for funds for GuySuCo in the 2014 budget. They voted the $6 billion requested by the Finance Minister even though they were dissatisfied with the manner in which GuySuCo is run as a party entity.
Mr Jagdeo could go further and ask why two ministers of the government – both protégés of Mr Jagdeo – called the transaction an investment proposal when in fact the purpose of the transaction was to help with GuySuCo’s never-ending cash flow problem.
Guyanese are not dumb. They know that housing involves and creates assets that are highly bankable, and even if it were true that the opposition had objected to any budgetary proposal, other sources for funding housing development were readily available. Guyanese are asking why after twenty-two years of PPP/C government and boasts of how well the economy is doing, the workers’ need for housing still has to be subsidised. The answer is simple: the entire economic programme pursued by the government has been premised on the substandard wages and salaries of workers and the exploitative nature of the investors.
Mr Jagdeo must also admit that he and others have treated GuySuCo like a party institution. For nearly two decades the PPP’s former General Secretary and current President sat on GuySuCo’s board, contributing to one disaster after another. But even by these low standards Mr Jagdeo was no better. He was the one who led GuySuCo into the disastrous Skeldon Project. Mr Ramotar continued the march of folly begun by Mr Jagdeo.
Messrs Jagdeo and Ramotar have to take their share of responsibility for the failure of GuySuCo and the loss of tens of billions of taxpayers’ funds over the years injected into it by the government. They have been the principal cause of the unhealthy state of GuySuCo and the nightmarish state of uncertainty which thousands of sugar workers and their families are now enduring.
Instead of improving the lives of sugar workers, the PPP/C has impoverished them by a system of dependency and subsidies.
Yours faithfully,
Ali Majeed,
Chairman,
Working People’s Alliance
