MINISTER of Finance Dr. Ashni Singh has described as totally incomprehensible, the comments attributed to AFC presidential candidate Mr. Khemraj Ramjattan in Thursday’s issue of the Kaieteur News on the subject of projects to be funded under the LCDS. The minister drew attention to the news story in which Ramjattan is reported to have said that he and his party, the AFC, had no information on the projects to be implemented under the LCDS and to be financed by payments made by Norway to Guyana under the historic agreement concluded between the two countries on forest-based climate services.
Minister Singh pointed out that the national budgets for 2010 and 2011 both included details of projects to be implemented under the programme. The inclusion of the projects in the national budget allowed parliamentarians full opportunity to ask as many questions as they wished about the projects, which opportunity was utilised by a number of parliamentarians and which allowed the projects to be subject to rigorous scrutiny by the entire Parliament and by the public.
In addition, the projects were the subject of substantial discussions in two successive versions of the Low Carbon Development Strategy which were tabled in the National Assembly in December 2009 and in July 2010 respectively, and both of which were widely consulted upon nationally and disseminated publicly, including on the LCDS website.
Furthermore, the minister pointed out, the LCDS was also the subject of extensive parliamentary debate under a motion that was moved in December 2009, as a result of which the National Assembly endorsed Guyana’s model of a low carbon development pathway tabled in the House as reflected in the revised LCDS.
Against this background, the minister declared that it is nothing short of astonishing that a serving Member of Parliament like Ramjattan could claim to be unaware of the projects being implemented. The minister further stated that it is most unfortunate that Mr. Ramjattan would choose to pay the scant regard he evidently did to all of government’s efforts to place information in the public domain and in the possession of the Members of the National Assembly, but still then turn around to insinuate that government was somehow responsible for his lack of knowledge.
The minister also described Ramjattan’s latest pronouncements as a rather clumsy retreat from his position of one week earlier that the funds payable to Guyana for these projects should be withheld from the country. Dr. Singh stated that, in Ramjattan’s haste to withdraw from that earlier and patently unpatriotic position, Ramjattan appeared to have conveniently lost his memory. (GINA)