Home Letters President Ali’s announcements of goodies a step in the right direction, Opposition...
Dear Editor,
President Ali may go down in Guyanese history as the President who has accomplished the most in a first term of office. He is on the right track with the various measures announced for the ongoing development of Guyana.
I guess the Opposition knew they couldn’t take all the good news that would be announced, so jealousy led them to boycott the good news session.
Free UG education and free GOAL scholarships would resonate with everyone, especially the young folks. Even the mighty USA does not give free higher education!
Who can argue with $200,000 per household, health vouchers, and $10,000 tax credits per child?
The announcement that most excites me is the President’s commitment to fixing the lingering problems of the NIS (National Insurance Scheme) that had bedeviled the General Manager and Finance Minister to fix. However,
going forward, NIS needs a fundamental review, massive overhaul, and urgent reforms.
The Constitutional Commission must address the outdated operations, policies, and practices of the NIS, whose current form is rooted in a bygone era which has created numerous victims, many of whom have died not receiving the NIS promise of security in their most vulnerable years when they need it most.
Brickbats to all those who denied those victims their benefits – the various tribunals, the NIS Boards, the Finance Ministers, and NIS top brass. The President has done what all these folks have not done in decades.
I hope my almost 90-year-old cousin would finally get his payday. He had been pushed around for 30 years waiting to get his pension, despite appeals to the higherups. NIS missed a year of contribution on his records. After initially telling him he never worked at Bermine, they subsequently said he had 740 contributions, but they were missing one year’s contributions.
Although we don’t have all the details of the plan, we trust the President’s intervention would remedy this decades-old wrongdoing by the NIS.
Now that the President is fixing NIS, the right thing will be for his government to withdraw the appeal of the Zainul case, where that poor working-class carpenter has been denied benefits although the court ruled in his favour. I ask the President to get the NIS folks to withdraw that appeal and pay the man and others their money.
I trust that as Government focuses on digitisation and modernization, funds would be allocated for reliable, high-speed Internet across the whole campus in schools, and funds would be allotted for a computer for every child and teacher in educational institutions. Put funds in the 2025 budget so that every classroom has air conditioning and a big screen TV for integrating technology in instruction. That is critical for improvement, and would be a tipping point for education reform.
Finally, I appeal to the President to increase the minimum pay to $150,000 a month, instead of $100,000 as proposed. Mr. President, our most vulnerable are catching hell; poor people are punishing bad; cleaners, janitors, small vendors, security guards, domestics, landscape workers, clerks, secretaries, receptionists, sales, restaurant, and fast-food workers, among others, cannot survive on $100,000. That is why there is a revolving door of these types of workers in our ministries and businesses.
Mr. President, put poor people first!
Sincerely,
Dr Jerry Jailall
