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The People’s Progressive Party’s (PPP) government wants to return to free education, which it took away. Member of Parliament, Shadow Minister of Social Services Natasha Singh-Lewis, told the National Assembly during the Budget 2024 Debate last week that the issue of ‘Free Education’ has continuously raised its ugly head every year during this period. MP Singh-Lewis told the House she’s “guided by the text that we should seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave.”
Singh-Lewis was at the time responding to the issue of the children of parliamentarians being ridiculed on the basis of who received a scholarship and who did not. “Why should we come here every year seeking to ridicule the children of parliamentarians?” the MP quizzed.
“Whether they are children of PPP parliamentarians or children of the APNU+AFC parliamentarians, for utilizing the opportunity given to them and all other Guyanese, it is sending a message, that the PPP parliamentarians and their children are more superior and deserving than the Coalition members and their children,” the Shadow Minister of Social Services told the National Assembly.
“The solution to all of this is free education. So let us get on with the agenda of free education at the university level, commencing this year, 2024. On this side, we have called for free education long before 2024. We have called; let it be known that it is the PPP government that is offering cosmetic measures to the issue of free education,” she said.
In the early 1990s, it was the People’s Progressive Party administration that added tuition to tertiary education in Guyana. In a January 16, 2024, video statement on Facebook, President Irfaan Ali said the “first phase of free university education will commence this year with the elimination of all loans, all outstanding student loans owed by students to the University of Guyana.” The head of state added that “our push to free university education, as we promised, is now well on the way.
The administration’s slow march to return free education to the citizens of Guyana, however, seems not to have a clearly defined approach. The Minister in the Office of the President with responsibility for Finance, Dr. Ashni Singh, said on Monday, May 15, 2024, during the reading of the National Budget, “In our 2020 manifesto, we promised a pathway for debt write-offs for persons with outstanding student loans.”
“In this regard,” he stated, “I now wish to announce that we will commence the first phase of eliminating outstanding loans owed by graduates of the University of Guyana.” The Minister, however, introduced conditionalities that “these graduates can demonstrate proof of being employed or self-employed in Guyana after their graduation for a minimum period to be specified.”
