GUYANA | The Adam Notebook: Government cash grant is like the beads and mirrors Columbus brought

GEORGETOWN,  Guyana, January 17, 2025- The poor never realise that they are poor. They may realise that they are hungry from time to time, or that their homes leak, or that their children cannot attend school sometimes. But they never consider themselves poor.

Just improve their condition a little bit and suddenly they will feel beholden to you. They will love you and sing your praises because they know no better.

As someone once sent to me, help someone once and when they need help again they will come back to you. I know that only too well. And so too does the government.

Everyone has heard of the government visiting communities and offering grants for one reason or the other. Panic steps in when that grant evaporates and the government is not there with another handout. The government knows this only too well.

When it decided to take its cash grant programme countrywide it was trying to appease the many who are disgruntled over not being able to maintain themselves. It was the same when it rushed countrywide to offer contracts to the poor and disadvantaged.

Those contracts were very short-term. The money earned is gone. The people want more but the government is in no position to satisfy their desires. Once more panic is setting in. Elections are due this year.

There will be another cash grant. There will be salary hikes and other trinkets to the masses. The situation would be no different from the days when Columbus landed with bright coloured beads and mirrors. He took their gold and other precious material.

He was able to fool those whom he met and interacted with but only for a while.

Others learned of his exploits and resorted to the same trickery. They even took the people’s tobacco much to the regret of the world today.

The government is busy devising other ploys to deceive the masses. One ploy is to hide the census report. That report was promised so long ago but it is still to be released. Word is that the census has some disquieting information.

No surprise that reporters who attend press conferences don’t even ask a question about the census. In fact, they don’t even prepare for the press conferences.

An example was found when the Education Minister held her press conference the other day. She listed the schools that her government was rebuilding or rehabilitating. She included the Good Hope Secondary School as one that her government built. That was a lie but no reporter confronted her.

There have been no questions about the absence of the post Cabinet press briefings. No one knows of the direction in which the country is going.

When her government returned to office in 2020 the Good Hope school was all but completed. As part of its reprisal against political opponents the government cancelled the contract that had been awarded to Brian Tiwarie.

Covid had caused the work to slow. Workers had got ill. The school was about ninety per cent complete. For reasons best known to himself and his company, Tiwarie did not put up too much of a fight.

The government paid more money to the new contractor than it would have cost to allow Tiwarie to complete the job. But Priya Manickchand listed that school among those constructed by the government post 2020.

The need to seek positives knows no bounds. When troubling questions arise the host simply resorts to abuse and would seek to discredit the questioner. More often than not he would deliver an arrogant answer as Bharrat Jagdeo did when asked about the loan conditions from the US Exim Bank.

He callously told the reporter to ask the US Exim Bank. He was just saying that he does not have to answer to anyone. But only the other day Prime Minister Mark Phillips told reporters that Vice President Jagdeo answers all questions.

The same Jagdeo is still to tell the nation what are the terms of repayment for the US$165 million loan from the Chinese spent on the Skeldon sugar factory.

But more than not answering questions, the government continues to make fools of people. The cash grant is perhaps the biggest hoax in recent times. Some have received but the roll out continues to be problematic.

As soon as word gets out, people trample each other to receive the cheques. Thankfully, the madness has subsided. People are content to sit back and wait until something happens, if it ever does.

Meanwhile excuses abound. There is a problem with the roll out. Of course there is a problem when after one month less than a fifth of the people have received any money.

People must realise that the cash grant is a distraction. The cost if living is still high; shoddy contracts are still being executed, projects are being abandoned and no explanation given. Think about the cash grant and fail to see the more important things around.

There is Irfaan Ali’s blunt refusal to confirm the Chancellor and the Chief Justice. One year ago I said that he had no intention of confirming these women. I still hold that view.

President of the Guyana Bar Association, Kamal Ramkarran, could not have been clearer in his condemnation of Ali’s refusal to confirm the women. He said that there has been no chancellor since 2005.

As he put it, a child born in that year would have been in the University of Guyana today. Would this the latest condemnation worry Ali? Public opinion says not in the least. There is no shame in these people. Why else would they seek to lie so readily knowing that the lie would be exposed?

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