–urges community to help fight to achieve it

PRESIDENT Donald Ramotar on Saturday visited the Arawak village of Wakapau in Pomeroon, Region Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam) where he updated residents of the indigenous community on national development issues.
He was accompanied by Minister within the Ministry of Agriculture, Mr Alli Baksh and Region Two Chairman, Mr Parmanand Persaud.The Head of State updated the community on obstacles facing the government in carrying out its development agenda, the main one being the Opposition’s ‘anti-development’ stance against such projects as the Specialty Hospital and efforts to have hydro-power in the country.

The President also spoke of the Opposition’s continued malingering on passage of the critical Anti-Money Laundering and Countering the Financing of Terrorism Bill, noting that the parties at reference are only looking after their own political agenda at the expense of the country and its people.
“They want power so bad, that they do not care if they hurt the ordinary people of our country,” the President said, adding that the Opposition’s sole purpose is to hurt the country in the hope that things will become so bad that the people would turn against the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Government.
Residents were also brought up to speed on the Opposition’s cutting of the National Budget, in the hope of scuttling those developmental programmes that would bring about significant benefit to all, and as a preamble to passing a no-confidence motion against the government for seeking to restore the funds cut from the 2014 Budget.
Noting that this latest action of the Opposition’s clearly showed their dishonesty by peddling the propagandist line that the Government, in restoring the cut projects, is acting illegally, President Ramotar said: “The Constitution gives us this right!”
He said too that the only reason they are getting away with it is that they have the advantage of having the country’s two main private newspapers on their side. “That is why they will never like us! That is why they will never write anything good about us in the paper, because of this different interest that they represent!” the President said.
During the meeting, the President also spoke of the many government efforts over the years to transform the economic landscape of the country. This transformation at reference includes the government identifying human resources development as a national priority, and investing in the provision of quality education.
The President noted that Government’s aligning education to the needs of society and Guyana’s future, has sought to live this philosophy and this is clearly shown through the annual budgets, whereby the largest chunk, is always allocated to the sector.
Government has also afforded access to enhanced education through the provision of more improved facilities, teacher training, computerisation in schools and homes, and building greater capacity in science and technology. Such programmes as the school uniform assistance, school feeding and the provision of books have also improved attendance.
Even as focus has been on education, other sectors including health, housing and agriculture, guided by prudent policies and programmes as implemented by the PPP/C administration, have also received much attention and have played their role in furthering the Guyanese economy and contributing to an improvement of livelihood country wide, the President noted.
He told the residents that the PPP/C needs their support to carry on the transformation of the country. He pointed out, too, that the Government has a lot of challenges ahead of it, but also with many things still to be achieved. This he noted can only be done collectively with support from residents to realise the full potential of the country.

(GINA)