In Parliament House….
MINISTER of Human Services and Social Security, Ms. Priya Manickchand, charged the Parliamentary Opposition, on Wednesday, with a lack of understanding in putting forward their arguments on the 2011 National Budget. “I ask members, particularly when they are analysing this budget, to do so with advice. Ask for sensible advice from sensible people who have no agenda and come here and tell the truth,” she advised them.
Manickchand described their presentations as the usual rhetoric heard from the Opposition benches year after year, implying that there is nothing for the people, no provisions for job creation and the budget is out of focus.
“It is the usual rhetoric which can be disproved,” she remarked.
Manickchand posited that the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) has brought more good things to the people of Guyana, with budgets that have, consistently, been increased each year, this year by 19.3 per cent.
“We bring to the people what we can give to them. We promised to serve and serve we will,” she pledged.
Addressing the election year budget criticism, Manickchand admitted that 2011 is an election year but said the government has no apologies to make for bringing services to the people, whether it is an election year or any other year.
The new People’s National Congress Reform-One Guyana (PNCR-IG) Shadow Finance Minister, Ms. Volda Lawrence, in her first presentation in that position, said, on Monday, that the budget had nothing of significance for the average man, woman and child.
She had called the plan for the future an erroneous impression without meaningful increases of clear measures to deal with many social issues affecting the Guyanese people.
Manickchand said Lawrence’s contribution lacked understanding of the Budget and pointed to one measure, the reduction of the taxes for companies, which, she said, would be reinvested in the country, creating employment.
“Anyone who says we have nothing for job creation, I say that person does not understand this year’s budget. They have not read it and they have not understood it. The rhetoric that says there is nothing for anyone is wrong,” she reiterated.
In response to Opposition cross talk, that the real issue of need for more jobs will not be addressed by an assumption that the companies benefiting will reinvest locally, Manickchand pointed to support for the elderly, women and children and maintained that all the provisions in the Budget are meant to benefit all Guyanese people, real people receiving real service.

BENEFIT
She said the sums allocated are meant to benefit the Guyanese people.
The minister remembered that the PPP/C 2006 Manifesto was taken to the Guyanese people and boasted that the promises in it have been delivered by the current administration.
“We have brought service to people. We have gotten more children educated with better quality of education. We have brought more health services to the people, more persons living in their own homes, driving through the streets, that is what an increase in the budgetary allocations mean,” she explained.
Manickchand compared the PNCR manifesto and said it had nothing for women nor children and absolutely nothing for the elderly.
“If the manifesto, at the stage of promise, says nothing, then what we can expect?” she asked.
Another PNCR-IG MP, Ms. Dawn Hastings, who spoke Wednesday, questioned the transformation of the PPP/C promises into reality for all Guyanese.
“It has not manifested in Region Seven (Cuyuni/Mazaruni),” she claimed.If the government is serious about its mandate,then interventions
should not be in the form of handouts but, rather, focused interventions which meet the actual needs of the people and not what the government thinks the people need.
Acknowledging that solar panels were given to Amerindian communities, she said those people have other pressing needs.
Prime Minister Samuel Hinds was overheard saying that was only part of the response by the government and there is much more to be done.
PPP/C MP, Mr. Bernard De Santos said the Opposition arguments presented in the House are, in themselves, contradictory.
He said Lawrence, in her remarks, made a preliminary assessment of the Budget and identified election sweets for the Guyanese people.
However, De Santos questioned the Opposition’s logic, in saying there was nothing for anyone and then admitting that people were receiving election sweets.
He said the government of the day has done much and there has been a shift in Guyana from the “donkey cart economy” to something that resembles a ‘Toyota/Nissan’ economy.
De Santos said there is hope for the further advance to a ‘Rolls Royce’ economy.