Latest update April 18th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jan 27, 2010 Letters
Dear Editor,
Many of this country’s problems stem from a single source. Starting from the constant robberies to the minibus menace, to people’s ongoing desire to migrate, in fact the very essence of the quality of life in Guyana is being held hostage to what in the past we called, “The cost of living.”
I remember in the late seventies and early eighties when things started going downhill my poor old mother would simply complain that the “cost of living is getting too high.”
“How”, she would complain, “do they expect you to live if it is too expensive to do so? What kind of life can you have?” Imagine what she’d say now, if she had lived to see these days? Remember when the Mighty Sparrow actually thought “10 to 1 is murder”? He was singing about the currency exchange rate.
Now hardly anything is ever seen or heard in the press about the cost of living index and what is being down to reduce it.
Guyanese have become totally accustomed to the harsh existence that comes with the dollar exchange rate of around US$200. And this is the source of almost all of our social trouble.
Minibus drivers speed excessively because they do not want to dwell in poverty; they want to be able to make enough money to maintain a humane standard of living. The crime rate is linked directly to poverty.
As purchasing power decreases and the standard of living spirals down more and more Guyanese are yearning to leave. Who can blame them?
Of course, I’m no economist and I do not quite understand why for so many decades, despite so much debt relief and so on, the much devalued condition of the Guyana dollar is not improving. Perhaps our export earnings are not doing as well as they should. Hopefully we can find some oil soon.
In any case it would be nice if someone more versed in such matters explain the situation better. How long will we be this poor?
All I know is that life in Guyana was much less brutal when the exchange rate was lower making things more affordable as people’s purchasing power, along with the variety of available goods, made a trip to the market a pleasurable experience. The pervading sense of desperation among the poor was much less palpable then.
Justin de Freitas
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