…for (Good?) and Green
After holding their breath for months and nearly asphyxiating themselves, the PPP Opposition finally will get its day in Parliament – next Monday – to raise matters they think are important for the national welfare. Or so they thought! Turns out that even though the “Private Members’s Day” is on the cards – the Government snuck in a bill that is sure to overshadow everything the PPP would’ve wanted to say.
The Government’s introducing a special Bill of its own – “Prime Minister Hamilton Green Pension Bill”! Yep…you heard that right. Hamilton Green – the fella who was Mayor of Georgetown between 1994 and 2016 – is going to get a SPECIAL pension for being Prime Minister between 1985 and 1992. Now Green, as we all knew, lived high off the hog while he was Mayor…quite like the jet setters we read about in the magazines. The man practically lived in foreign five-star hotels after he sipped champagne on his first-class flights.
In Georgetown, his mayoral security detail and transport vehicles rivalled any Banana Republic’s head. And all the while…he did in fact collect a pension for his stint as Prime Minister! So what gives now? It appears that he complained to the PNC-led APNU/AFC Administration that his present pensions don’t allow him to “live in the style he’s used to”! So the special Bill will now allow the Government to compute his pension at the rate of the incumbent PM, Moses Nagamootoo, who just had a million top up to bring his salary to million/annually. And we know they compute pensions at 7/8 of the salary. So Green will be hauling in a cool .5 million annually or .46 million/monthly!! A raise of over 1500 per cent!!!
And not only the money…but the “benefits” – meaning DUTY-free cars, guards, gardeners, chauffeurs, etc, etc. But your Eyewitness has a question for the Government. Maybe it’s OK not to compare the former PM with the public servants who are RIGHT NOW pleading to get the “significant” raise they were promised by this same Government. But if Green, with all his benefits provided by the City Council didn’t allow him to live in dignity, how about the old, retired Ministers and parliamentarians who are also collecting pensions at the old rate? Don’t they deserve to live with some sort of dignity?
But this latest action is intended to rub salt into the wounds of the PPP and the Guyanese people. The economy has tanked, there’s no plan to get it going…but all this Government can do is spend scarce dollars on its old faithful.
Why not? It’s only your money!
…for our green City
Well, for one brief, shining moment we did have a glimpse of “the way we were” in Georgetown, didn’t we? Parapets weeded, drains draining, trees pruned, vendors summarily evicted….Now we all knew it wouldn’t last…but did it have to end so quickly? Well to be brutally frank, yes. It HAD to end that quickly if for no other reason than from the very beginning, the whole “sprucing up” business was not to change the character of the management of Georgetown – but just to impress some visitors for Jubilee.
As Einstein said, you can’t repeat same action and expect a different result – unless, of course, you’re stark, raving bonkers! So you can’t stick with the same team that ran Georgetown into the gutter for the last two decades and expect them to do things differently, can you?
So we’re back to a city drowning in garbage and the Gang of Four’s asking the Government for 0 million to “clean up”.
Why not? It’s only your money!
…Mexicans!
Did you ever stop to think Trump isn’t just demanding Mexico pays for the Wall he plans to build to keep out Mexicans – but from land the US seized from them back in the 19th century??!!
But they’re only Mexicans, aren’t they?
