Dear Editor,
Your Editorial of 30th December (“Oil money and poverty”) correctly criticized the clueless and incompetent PPP government for failing to tackle poverty, inequality, and general misery in Guyana. Indeed, the disconnect continues to widen between the huge inflow of oil revenues into the treasury and the poor living conditions of most Guyanese. As expected, however, you felt the need to gesture to equal opportunity criticism by claiming that the Leader of the Opposition is “consumed by political cases in the courts” in a way that will not help the impoverished. Editor, it is one thing for SN to rarely report on the Opposition press statements and community outreaches. It is another for SN to be unaware that the issue of poverty and living standards consumed much of the Opposition’s attention throughout 2022. Let me illustrate this attention.
First, the Opposition has declared that, given our oil wealth, the social and economic rights of citizens enshrined in the Guyana constitution and in international human rights conventions are no longer unreachable aspirations but can now be fully realized. So, for instance, we can pay more than lip service to Article 40 (1) of our constitution, which mandates that “every person in Guyana is entitled to the basic right to a happy, creative and productive life, free from hunger, ignorance, and want” and to the UN Sustainable Development Goals which obligate nations to, among other things, eliminate poverty by 2030. Second, APNU+AFC has repeatedly rejected the PPP’s so-called trickle-down economics. At a Press Statement in April, for instance, the Coalition stated: “We reject trickle-down economics (unlike the PPP). We believe in a bottom-up approach based on people empowerment policies and programmes… and will reverse the PPP’s approach of using the people’s wealth to enrich the PPP elite, family, and friends.”
Third, as early as January 2022, the Opposition called for a National Poverty Survey to inform the design of policies and programmes to eliminate poverty forever in Guyana – similar to the field assessment advocated in your editorial. However, apart from mapping the consequences of poverty and directing urgent relief to poor families, such a survey must also identify the types and causes of poverty. Such information is essential to design structured and sustainable anti-poverty responses, instead of a patchwork of one-off measures. A comprehensive field survey, however, cannot be left to party activists, as SN recommended, if only for the fact that such work requires a large squad of professionals to identify, among other critical data, hidden poverty, child malnourishment, families at risk, and those who have recently become impoverished as the cost of living spiraled.
Fourth, the Opposition has called for the introduction of a Minimum Livable Income, which we define as the amount of money a person or family must earn to live comfortably above the poverty line. This income, it added, must be calculated regularly based on the costs of living, family size, geographic location, and inflation. Depending on the circumstances of each family, such living income could be achieved through a mix of measures that include wage increases, waiver of personal income taxes for the working poor, child allowances, small business grants, subsidies on utilities and other basics, and social assistance and security. Fifth, the Opposition has proposed a comprehensive social protection program, an idea on which the PPP has been silent. On World Food Day and International Day for the Eradication of Poverty 2022, the Opposition again committed “to investing our oil revenues in a comprehensive social safety net or social protection system.
There will be integrated and structured policies and programs to comprehensively ensure the well-being of children, youths, families, workers, the Indigenous people, the elderly, and all others who are vulnerable. In contrast to the PPP’s trickle-down economics, which works nowhere in the world, we will make these investments off the bat, while pursuing other development goals such as in infrastructure, agriculture, and value-added manufacturing.” Sixth, the Opposition noted that the soaring cost of living is pushing more and more families to the breadline in Guyana. Throughout the year, it called on government to treat this matter as a national crisis. Additionally, it proposed several relief measures, such as a subsidy on basic food items, payment of a market supplement to low-wage earners, the expansion of the school feeding program, the urgent and impartial distribution of the $5B budgeted by government for relief, a cap on fuel prices, and a waiver of water and electricity payments for low-income households.
Editor, with the PPP’s trickle-down economics, bad governance, “Two-Guyana” mindset (or as you once described it: “One-party” mindset), politics of exclusion and control, and clueless and incompetent economic management, the disconnect between a bulging Natural Resource Fund and the quality of life of most Guyanese is here to stay for as long as the PPP government stays.
Sincerely,
Sherwood Lowe
