Back in the day, the dictator Chavez of Venezuela assisted the poor – some 200,000 of them – in several cities in the States by paying their heating bills. He was further pi55ing off US leaders, who were up in arms against him for squeezing out American oil companies. Well, without any motive against the foreign jurisdictions where Guyanese have migrated, the Govt of Guyana has just announced that Guyanese resident there are also eligible for the $100,000 cash grant payout that has been announced for all Guyanese over 18!!
In this case, the overseas Guyanese don’t have to prove they’re poor and need the money; all they gotta do is show they’re Guyanese by producing a valid Guyanese passport or National ID Card!! The courts have already ruled that overseas Guyanese have the same rights as those at home – when they were asked to strike out their names from the voters’ list. No can do, said the courts!! So, if they have the right to choose a government – the ultimate right of a citizen – they certainly have the right to any goodies being shared out to citizens!!
Now the Government has announced that overseas citizens can collect the money only if they return to Guyana and show their passport or ID Card. That sounds fair to your Eyewitness. There have been repeated claims that there are “as many Guyanese living outside as inside Guyana”!! This handout might just test this assertion. The fly in the ointment would be for claimants to produce their passports or National ID Cards. Your Eyewitness can see that, from today, there’s gonna be a tsunami of applications at our foreign embassies in NY, Toronto, and elsewhere for Guyanese passports – even by those who’ve left more than half a century ago!! Your Eyewitness also knows there’s gonna be demands from some old codgers that their old red ID Cards from the seventies be accepted!!
Some might say Guyanese abroad don’t need any US$500 – equivalent to the GY$100,000. But “need” got no relevance to real Guyanese!! Once there’s freeness sharing, Guyanese gonna come out of the woodwork to collect!! And your Eyewitness can just see some slick airline advertising a US$500 return trip ticket with a slogan: “Get a return flight to Guyana without shelling out a penny from your pockets!!” THAT’ll get a ton of folks heading south to their native land!!
That raises the question of how much money the Government would need for this cash grant programme. The adults in Guyana — as per the voters’ list, which contains some overseas Guyanese —probably amount to somewhat more than the 661,000 from 2020. 700,000 with the Guyanese who’ll return for the payout?
So, we’re now talking about some GY$70 billion??
…and cars
News just came out that we’ve just entered PAJ registration plates for motor vehicles. And if you thought it was only yesterday that we entered PAH, you wouldn’t be wrong!! We’ve imported 9,999 cars in the last 4 months; and at this rate, we’ll be importing over 30,000 annually, since the rate keeps accelerating. Your Eyewitness now understands why, with all the roads constructed since 2021, the roadways are still as jammed as ever: we’re importing vehicles faster than we’re building roads!!
And this is even though we have one of the highest tax rates in the world on motor vehicles; and we bitch and moan about it all the time!! So, where’s all this money coming from, if – as the Opposition complains – it ain’t trickling down to the masses?? There was a time – say, around 1992 – when only the rich could afford a car. But now there’s a car in every yard, even in the villages!!
Let the good times roll!!
…on change
The Hungarian Uprising of 1956 had a seismic effect in Guyana. It showed our local idealistic communists that the Ruskies would crush dissent just like the Imperialists would!!
So, Hungarian PM Orban’s complaint, on the Uprising’s 68th anniversary, that the WEST is trying to overthrow him is very ironic.
