The nit-picking and rumour-mongering continue

Dear Editor,
They go to great lengths to highlight an occasional crack in the road or to explain why a blackout occurred; it is the preoccupation of the opposition and its acolyte media personnel. They desperately crave attention with their nit-picking – like a broken record, they keep repeating the narrative over and over again.
However, they would never stop to give a sensible explanation as to the source of the troubles that they speak about, because if they do, the finger would automatically turn inwards on them, but they persist.
The most recent of their empty rhetoric is the statements made by the Government as regards a cash grant pay-out to citizens of this country. They are contrasting the campaign promise made by Prime Minister Phillips and by the President against the statement made by the natural resource Minister as diametrically opposed to each other. The truth of the matter is, they are not opposites.
What the President and Prime Minister said are factual statements: that citizens will be the recipients of a cash grant, the exact amount of which will be announced shortly. Now, the seemingly contrasting statement made by Minister Vickram Bharrat is also a factual statement which should be taken in context; that is, we would not be lulled into a sense of dependency or one in which Guyana becomes a welfare state; that will not happen!
Citizens must realise that the PPP/C promotes development and progressive-thinking people and not the indolence and crass laziness that some envision.
Some in society behave as if everybody, especially the Government, owes them something, and the culture of hard work and developmental ideals is not part of their psyche. Well, I am happy to disappoint by telling these persons that they will be left behind while the rest of our One Guyana moves into the future.
I have written extensively on this subject of being dependent on handouts, wherein I highlighted the pitfalls of such an outlook: we just have to review the fortunes of sister Caricom country Trinidad and learn from their mistakes. At the height of the oil boom, Trinidad instituted a welfare plan of Cost-of-Living Allowance (COLA). The sums that citizens earned from COLA were significant, in that they could have taken care of a household and a “Jabal” at the side comfortably. Of course, many jumped on it with gusto, especially men of a certain ethnicity who left their jobs just to live on COLA.
I say we must run away from that train of thought. Guyanese cannot, and I repeat, cannot develop themselves solely on the help of handouts. We must develop the attitude of progressive thinking and progressive upward living.
Simply put, both statements are in order: yes, we will be given cash grants; however, we will not, I repeat again, we will not be lulled into a dependency syndrome.
In conclusion, Guyana is on an upward trajectory, and all of us will be part of that grand movement.

Yours sincerely,
Neil Adams