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It is its human resources that build a country. The Alliance For Change (AFC) contends Guyana’s human resources have been forgotten. In a press conference on the eve of Budget 2024 being read in the National Assembly, it had hoped to see an increase in the minimum wage by 50%, and associated adjustment in the Public and Private Sectors.
The party had anticipated a trillion-dollar budget in its analysis of ramped-up spending by the government-led People’s Progressive Party (PPP). For its fifth consecutive budget, directly improving the Public Servants had had no central focus. In Budget 2024, the Government of Guyana announced a whopping 1.146 trillion dollars in allocations and appropriations for the fiscal year.
But while the PPP government boosts its care for the people and says that we are “One Guyana”, it has failed to treat them with love, care, and concern. Once again, in the fourth budget presented to the National Assembly by the PPP, the Public Servants have been left out.
In her presentation at the National Assembly for Budget 2024, Shadow Minister of Finance Juretha Fernandes made this fact very clear and bold. According to her, the government is nothing without Public Servants.
She noted that between 2015 and 2019, with $1.2 trillion, the APNU+AFC administration increased the wages and salaries of Public Servants by 77% without oil revenue. The Shadow Minister argued that since coming to power, the PPP has spent $3.25 trillion and has only increased public servants’ wages and salaries by 23%.
According to the MP, with 900 billion in 2023, the PPP increased public servants’ wages and salaries by a meager 6.5%.
“This increase does nothing to the ordinary Guyanese who are struggling to make ends meet, especially with the high cost of living and increasing prices for basic food items in the markets. It does nothing for the Guyanese community, who are forced to move from their homes in the outlying regions in search of jobs and housing,” Fernandes said.
Guyanese, she said, are now forced to feed their families substandard meals because, simply put, they cannot afford to buy healthy meals to get the nutritional value of foods. According to MP Fernandes, if the PPP stays true and on course, at the end of 2024, the public sector will see an equally meaningless increase and the standard of living in the country will be reduced even lower.
Ram and McRae 2024 Budget Review note “with considerable disappointment that the national minimum wage has not changed since 1st of July 2022. An increase in the tax threshold does nothing to someone who is paid 30% less than that threshold. A minimum wage of $60,147 per month is simply unacceptable, insensitive and uncaring. We need benefits that genuinely target the unemployed and the working poor. This is a task for the social and economic and finance ministries.”
