Budget debate got underway with fiery exchanges

The debates on the 2020 Emergency Budget got underway on Monday at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC) with members on both sides trading fiery barbs and questions being posed to the Government side.
During his presentation, Minister of Labour Joseph Hamilton used the floor to speak to his portfolio. He spoke of the constraints he has encountered, in taking up his office and the steps they will be taking to address them.
Minister Hamilton flayed the former A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) Government for the lack of attention it paid to labour-related issues during its time in office.
He explained that when he took office, the Ministry of Labour (formerly a Department in the then Ministry of Social Protection) was staffed with 87 persons. However, he noted that the recommended complement of staff should be 137.
“That is the reason why they could not have done anything tangible. So you could not have proper workplace inspections. You could not have proper investigations of accidents. Because they don’t have the employees to carry out their functions,” Hamilton told the House.
It was not lost on Hamilton that all four Ministers with responsibility for labour under APNU/AFC – Volda Lawrence, Simona Broomes, Amna Ally and Keith Scott – were omitted by their party from the list of parliamentarians. According to Hamilton, labour stagnated under APNU/AFC.
“The Ministry of Labour, reestablished, will be built and will stand on three pillars. One, capacity building. Two, human development and three, the protection of the rights of workers. Capacity building, we would set out to train and retrain workers. And we have already put in place activities to do that.”
“Human development in that context, we believe that workers’ welfare should be looked after. The issue of housing. The issue of healthcare. The issue of education and access to education, for themselves and children,” Hamilton said.

First-timers
Also taking the floor were a number of first time MPs who delivered their maiden speeches and rebuttals, as well as question regarding some of the PPP’s campaign promises. They included Junior Minister of Public Works Deodat Indar and Opposition MP, Coretta McDonald.
Indar lambasted APNU/AFC for their poor handling of the Guyana Power and Light (GPL), noting that the agency was saddled with a US$50 million loan despite the emptiness of its coffers. He also noted that a lack of investment into building base capacity has hobbled GPL’s ability to deliver uninterrupted power.
McDonald, who is the General Secretary of the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU), spoke to a number of labour-related issues. In particular, she pointed out that workers in the commercial sector are being paid meagre wages and salaries which are inadequate to meet their needs.
“I call on the Honourable Minister of Labour to put in place systems to make the $60,000 agreed upon by the Tripartite Committee as the new minimum wage for the Private Sector employees,” she urged.
Last year, the Tripartite Committee had begun discussions with the aim of raising the Private Sector minimum wage to $60,000. However, meetings of the Committee had stalled and no firm decision was made as to how to proceed.
The Private Sector’s minimum wage has not increased since 2017 when it was raised from the monthly wage of $35,000 to $44,200. On the other hand, the minimum wage in the public sector currently stands at $70,000.
Last month, Labour Minister Joseph Hamilton had assured the media that the Tripartite Committee would be meeting to continue discussions to increase the minimum wage in the Private Sector.

Fresh air
Government Member of Parliament, Seepaul Narine, another first-time parliamentarian, meanwhile waded into the previous APNU/AFC Administration over its management of the country during the last five years, particularly in relation to its handling of the sugar sector.
Narine, who serves as the General Secretary of the Guyana Agriculture and General Workers’ Union (GAWU), said that this year’s budget was like “a breath of fresh air” for many Guyanese since it seeks to reverse the backward, anti-development policies that the previous Administration had implemented.
“Budget 2020 marks the first step in the journey to reverse the vampire-like policies that plagued our nation over the last five years when the coalition spared no one, except themselves,” Narine posited.
He reminded that during the APNU/AFC’s tenure in office, “many poor Guyanese faced troubled times to put meals on the table and could not get jobs…and many of their gains were sucked away by the coalition Government.”
Meanwhile, Government MP Sanjeev Datadin used a portion of his maiden speech to hold the former Government accountable for the erosion of the rule of law, during the five months in which they refused to concede their electoral loss. He also noted that almost half of the budget will be used to cover the expenses the former Government racked up before they demitted office.
“The last time this House considered a budget, was 2018. In excess of $160 billion of this present budget, is to pay all of that expenditure that took place from January 1 to August 2nd, without any parliamentary oversight, without any oversight whatsoever!” Datadin informed the House.