Every single day there are more galling examples of APNU/AFC’s hypocrisy. Whether it is insulting sugar workers or other workers, pensioners or children, people forced into squatting, even the dead, every single day, the David Granger-led APNU/AFC expose their total lack of empathy for the most vulnerable in the society. Other than themselves, APNU/AFC has shown no care for any citizen. A prime example of David Granger and APNU/AFC’s hypocrisy is the dishonesty in the cash grant for school children. The programme started by the PPP Government in 2014 was intended to be increased annually so that by 2020 it would have been $50,000 per child. However, the Granger-led APNU/AFC Government discontinued the programme in 2015.
At the APNU/AFC’s Anna Regina rally last week, David Granger regaled a boated-in, bussed-in crowd with the fake promise – if people vote APNU/AFC back in office, he will use OIL MONEY to bring back the cash grant for schoolchildren. Granger did not mention schoolchildren already were receiving such cash grants in 2014, without any oil money, because of the PPP, and that it was him as President who took away the cash grant, using the money to give himself and his bloated cabinet a 100% pay increase. Mr Granger was being dishonest and indecent, promising schoolchildren a cash grant when it was his Government that took it away from them in the first place. It was utter hypocrisy; his promise being a poster child for fakery.
In five years, more than $10B was taken away from ordinary working-class families, assuming that the amount had remained $10,000 per child throughout the five years. Fact is that the $10B over the last five years represent the bare minimum Mr Granger’s Government took away from children. Had the programme continued, in fact, it would have distributed up to $38B between 2015 and 2020. That was the amount a PPP Government would have placed directly into the pockets of families with school-aged children over five years. And that was without any oil money. That was the amount a heartless Granger-led APNU/AFC took away from working-class people’s children, children from all ethnic groups, even children of people who voted for Granger.
With elections scheduled in twenty-seven days, Mr Granger succumbed to pressure because cash grant for school children is one of the more popular policy positions in the new PPP manifesto. The PPP has declared emphatically it would resume the cash grant programme and lift the sum to $50,000 per child, not with oil money. Without acknowledging it was a terrible mistake to stop the programme, Mr Granger promised a cash grant programme, as if it was never in place, as if this is an entirely new initiative from APNU/AFC. He never offered an apology for ripping-off ordinary Guyanese families between $10B and $38B in the last five years. The decent thing was for Mr Granger to apologise first and then guarantee people the cash grant for schoolchildren will resume with immediate effect.
But if anyone noticed the blatant hypocrisy and indecency, Granger did not make a commitment, he made only a conditional promise – the cash grant would be with OIL money, when OIL money becomes available. But the cash grant in 2014 was made without the benefit of OIL money. Why could Mr Granger not guarantee families with school children the resumption of the cash programme the PPP started that would have meant $50,000 per child by 2020? If it were done in 2014 without OIL money and when the country’s total tax revenues was just about 50% what it is today, why should the programme now depend only on OIL revenues?
Mr Granger had explained back in 2015 that the cash grant for schoolchildren was dumped because the country was left bankrupt by the PPP. But he did not then explain how it was possible to increase the salaries of cabinet members by 100%. He did not explain how it was possible to increase the food and drinks bill for Government by $1.5B annually or how it was possible to expand and renew the fleet of vehicles, with not just any vehicles, but with luxury vehicles. Mr Granger claimed the cash grant was replaced by buses, boats and bicycles. But the thirty buses barely function, with down-time for repairs more than 90% and the cost of maintenance more than the procurement of new buses. The fourteen boats are mostly missing and, everywhere I go in the country, I am yet to find any child that received one of the 1400 bicycles they claimed they purchased. But the fact is that the $10-38B they ripped from the families around the country could have bought enough buses, boats and bicycles for all the families in Guyana. And also every child would have had a laptop, something else Granger’s group took away from children of working-class families. Mr Granger’s 2020 election promise of cash grants to schoolchildren is sheer hypocrisy, totally fake and empty. He should be ashamed. It is a disgrace.
