Dear Editor,
When President Irfaan All announced the second cash grant for public servants there was reason to rejoice from those at the bottom of the food chain – NDC workers. Surely, it was felt, those front line workers who are cleaning drains and collecting garbage, as well as earning the lowest salary, should certainly have been near on the top of the list.
Now it seems evident that this class of workers has once again been left out. Whilst Irfaan has been talking of great things to come – even plans to take care of animals in his pre-budget speech to parliament, forgetting to include the lowly animals of his own specie from the NDCs in this pandemic, places a huge question mark on his sincerity. One would have expected that NDC workers, working in the most bacterial infested conditions, cleaning the environment for mainstream society, would have been mentioned as frontline workers to receive the covid-19 vaccine by the president; that did not happen.
Whilst it could be argued that the president used the words “frontline workers”, the NDC workers were never treated as “frontline” by the previous APNU AFC administration when the pandemic broke. Our continued neglect, or lack of recognition, by the Ali administration is only suggestive that the status quo remains. So when the president said that, “There is no reason for our country to remain poor”, one can understand the skepticism – country and people are two different entities. Is Irfaan Ali really in charge? Or, is he just the master propagandist for the gov’t?
On the flip side! Ali’s cash grant to household slithered into cash grant to homeowners – people who rent apartments could testify. Many had watched in grief as their landlords collected, whilst they were asked to sign a pink slip and wonder if their 25,000 will ever arrive. That 25,000 may have barely graced their hands before ending up in the palm of their landlords as rent. For the tenants, the “household” cash grant remains in limbo – compliments of the vision of the Ali govt. Who is more in need in this pandemic? The landlords or the tenants? Will the homeless paying a rent be left behind too? Is this lack of vision or willful intent by the Ali gov’t?
The signs seems ominous, and with the VP describing the actions of the opposition leader as “laughable” in his recent press appearance, I wonder if this gov’t is only capable of seeing the “mote” in their predecessor’s eye and not their own, or is the poor destined to be collateral damage with the offer of a better life for the upper class by virtue of policy?
Yours faithfully,
(Name and address supplied)
