Playing with fire

With the budget debate having commenced, we would like to highlight a clear and present danger that is being posed to the survival of our country because of inflammatory and opportunistic positions being taken on certain budgetary items. In most countries budgets are considered as dry and recondite matters. However, in our country because of our cleavages they can be literally incendiary because there are politicians willing to exacerbate those cleavages by claiming budgetary initiatives favour one group while sanctioning others.

We will illustrate our concern with references to statements made by two officers of the AFC – Khemraj Ramjattan and Moses Nagamootoo – but point out that they are unfortunately typical of the entire opposition’s rhetoric. In his Budget Speech Finance Minister Ashni Singh flagged the parlous state of GPL. He indicated the government was forced to allocate Gy$6 billion to the corporation so as not to raise its Gy$64/K hr tariff to its customers for Berbice to Essequibo. Simultaneously, he noted that the government would be forced to begin phasing out the subsidy (making the rate of Gy$6 per K hr the cheapest in the entire world) for electricity to Lindeners.

Ramjattan and Nagamootoo immediately rushed to Linden and told the residents the ‘spiteful’ PPP government had always treated them as ‘step children’. The proposed rise in electricity was a ‘vengeful’ act by the government, according to the AFC, because the PPP had been rebuffed by Lindeners.

To ensure the latter got the message of discrimination vs favouritism another AFC executive promised that they would ensure Lindeners, “get what every other area in Guyana is getting.” But what exactly was ‘every other area’ getting? The regular rate of Gy$64/K hr. The AFC leaders, even more insidiously did not confine their remarks to the electricity subsidy – this, they claimed was only the tip of the iceberg. Ramjattan claimed that the PPP administration had subjected the people of Linden to “years of economic starvation”. And it is this kind of demagoguery that has tipped Guyana over the edge into interethnic violence on more than one occasion.

What exactly has been the record on Linden? The PNC nationalisation of bauxite in 1970 just hastened its destruction.

By 1992, the company was on the bloc after the IMF insisted it be privatised. The PNC in 1990 had passed its management over to an Australian company Minproc, which reduced its workforce from 3000 to 1400. The government took over US$30 million of Guymine debt in 1992. Since 1992 until it finally found a buyer (Cambior) in 2003, the government subsidised the company at the cost of 1.5 per cent of the entire GDP of the country annually, in a desperate bid to keep Lindeners employed. It was Cambior/govt that offered a retrenchment/payout to some 900 of its workforce – each worker received millions – three years of take home pay. The government paid up to Gy$2 billion in these separation costs.

The government took over the subsidisation of the power costs which since 2006 amounted to Gy$13.7 billion.

Last year the average Linden household was subsidised at Gy$20,000 per month – way above the national average. Lindeners have no incentive to conserve. New hospitals, schools, roads, water purification and distribution systems, etc, were built. By 2002, there was a multibillion government of Guyana-EU project – LEAP – with the objective of fostering entrepreneurship and enterprise for economic development of the town of Linden.

LEAF is an ongoing complementary programme to LEAP, to provide accessible micro small and medium credit facilities in support of economic activities. A Legal Aid Clinic for Linden, recently in the news, epitomises the special attention given to Linden. Politicians should not fan flames.