…for sugar workers
It’s going on two years since 5700 sugar workers were fired directly when the PNC Government had GuySuCo shutter four sugar estates. Another 2000 were also placed on the roti-lines when private farmers who supplied cane to the closed sugar estates had to go out of business. How are these people going to find employment to take care of the more than 30,000 persons who depend on then to survive??
Well, back in 2015, not long after they slid into office, the PNC had launched the “Sustainable Livelihood and Entrepreneurial Development (SLED) Initiative” to deal with poverty in communities across the land. Handled through the Ministry of Communities, a Social Protection Department would identify opportunities in communities for unemployed persons to open up all sorts of small businesses by getting training and loans. In Aug 2015, Finance Minister Jordan announced a budget of $117 MILLION for the next four months. So far so good.
Now with those 7700 sugar workers facing starvation from 2016-2017 – especially in Berbice – you’d think SLED was tailor-made to help them out, wouldn’t you? Well, if you thought so, you’d be wrong!!
In 2016, 2017 and 2018, similar budgets of around $100 million annually were given to SLED, and hundreds were transitioned into poultry farming, condiment manufacturing, etc. $155 million was given to LEN in Linden, but not a single cent to the devastated sugar communities drowning in despair.
This was revealed last week when PPP MP Vindhya Persaud quizzed the Government benches and the sordid tale slipped out. The excuse offered by PNC Whip Amna Ally is that while SLED was supposed to help any and all communities, the folks in the communities had to APPLY…and then they’ll be funded!! Really?? Going by the optics, your Eyewitness could see in every instance when the recipients of funding from SLED were publicised, they were overwhelmingly from the PNC’s constituency!! And he’ll bet dollars to donuts those folks didn’t apply for any SLED help – without FIRST being organised by PNC activists.
That lady who was pardoned by President Granger and then received a $200,000 grant, was she organised? All those delinquent youths who passed through the US Embassy’s programme SKYE, did they organise themselves? Pleeeease!! We all know what’s going on here, don’t we? It’s pork-barrel time for PNC supporters…and let the good times roll!!
And from a PNC perspective, the different treatment makes sense, doesn’t it? Since their closure of the sugar factories was designed to drive a stake into the heart of the PPP support base, why keep that base alive by SLED interventions? To these army types, their motto is drawn from their training in warfare: Show no mercy to the enemy!!
…in Cricket Administration
Your Eyewitness had a good chuckle – even a few guffaws! – over a letter and article written by David Hinds, in which he claimed the PPP Government facilitated the Guyana Cricket Board (GCB) in policies for board and team selections he deemed to be “racial”!! Which country was he living in over the past decade, when the PPP Government and the GCB were locked in mortal combat? Well, he was living in the US…but the fella does keep up with matters “back home”, so there’s got to be some other factor operating here.
Didn’t he hear about that High Court judgement against the GCB, for an IMC to be established and new elections to be held? Didn’t he hear about a Linden local board being facilitated to open up the voting process? Didn’t Rupert Roopnaraine, on behalf of the APNU, support the new Cricket Bill in the House? Wasn’t it Basil Williams who removed the lawyer appointed by Nandlall, the PPP AG, from fighting the GCB’s appeal??
Give the PPP its (maroon) jacket!!
…for Bangladesh Cricket
Your Eyewitness didn’t realise how much Bangladesh is despised by its fellow South Asian cricket teams for their showboating, until he saw the latter’s reaction to their drubbing at the hands of the WI!!
The Indians, Pakistanis and Sri Lankans take schadenfreude to a new low!!
