Latest update March 28th, 2024 12:59 AM
Sep 13, 2011 Letters
DEAR EDITOR,
Reference is made to a letter “Some people have it good,” (KN 09/09/2011) in response to mine “Eroding the dignity of the young by denying them what’s rightly theirs” (KN 08/09/2011).
The PPP’s contempt for the young through continued distortions and denying them what’s rightly theirs is taking new height and therefore must not to be taken lightly. It is known the young are not among those who “have it good.” In fact, they are being severely deprived, as is evident in the absence of a Youth Development Policy; the presence of high unemployment; poor social services; limited/denial of educational opportunities; suppression of their potential; trampling of their rights; their parents struggling to make ends meet; crime, corruption and scarcity of role models in the corridors of power.
These are issues they wake up to and go to bed with every day and night, and many only see hope in migration, which denies this nation the resources and skills needed for development. For many barrels and/or remittances have become a staple of survival.
Every responsible and caring government strives to ensure full employment by creating an enabling environment for work. So to tell the young that “it is best to leave job creation in the hands of the private sector as they are driven by market forces” is to support the government abandoning its foremost responsibility to the citizens, which is to ensure they lead productive lives.
It is sacrilegious to communicate to workers, including the young, that because the “shortfall in Revenue [has to] be made up” theirs is the responsibility to shoulder same on their small income, through the draconian PAYE and VAT, given the fact that the president, ministers and their cohorts are exclude from such burden/responsibility with their tax-free incomes and perks. Add to that the problem of protection by officialdom of those who squander the workers’ hard earned tax dollars.
If this administration were serious about holistic development, expanding the tax base and revenue earning, it would have led by example, paid heed to tax reform recommendations, and held violators accountable.
On the National Development Strategy (NDS), which points out that between 1992-1997 “employment decline was 46 percent in the public service; Linmine 43 percent; Bermine 30 percent; and in GuySuCo, 31 percent,” again, only an irresponsible and uncaring government would take pride in this massive lay-off.
To justify the PPP putting people out of work by blaming the PNC administration, when the PPP was elected to do better and campaigned on promises to do so, confirms the disregard this government has for politics that put people and their development at the centre. Additionally, while the NDS addresses lay-offs for a five-year period, were one to add the lay-off and new workforce entrants that are unemployed for the remaining 17 years, its exposes the anti-worker nature of this government.
Further, trying to explain away the failure to implement the NDS – which aims to ensure structured and equitable development for all – under the pretext that it “could be useful only if it had costings” raises the other issues of: 1) untrustworthiness of this government who played a role in the NDS compilation and has the responsibility for its implementation, and 2) their weddedness to a plantation society sustained on the oppressive divide and rule ideology, where we witness structured inequity, different rules for them and the people, as they parade their questionable wealth and hold themselves above the law. Now, to hide their oppressive management, failures and ad hoc approaches to national
planning and implementation, the young are being told the “State Planning Secretariat …would just create another layer of bureaucracy and slow down development.” The truth is the Secretariat is established under law (Chapter 78:02) to handle central planning of the economy which this government continues to disregard. And since development is foremost about people, when persons are being denied what’s rightly theirs it undermines development.
It is not “development” when 60 percent of the GDP comes from drugs (Professor Clive Thomas, et al); the US Embassy’s information of the government’s cosiness with the underworld, unwillingness to fight corruption and the drug trade (WikiLeaks); coupled with free reign of phantom squads; police reports of increasing crimes; fear gripping the masses; stifling freedom of expression (private media and protest); high unemployment; skyrocketing prices; widening gap between the haves and have-nots; and violation of rights and the rule of law.
In fact, these are indicators of a nation about to lose its soul and implode if the people, and more particularly the young who the future belongs to, do not stand up, speak out, and bring an end to it.
We, the people, have to take our country back from the lawless. This administration has failed us and proven it is incapable of delivering good governance. Being given the privilege to govern, in the interest of all, they have abused it.
Lincoln Lewis
THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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