All Guyanese will be deprived by Budget cuts
BOTH the Private and Public Sectors will suffer as a result of the cuts from the 2012 National Budget, according to Agriculture Minister Dr. Leslie Ramsammy. In an interview with the Guyana Chronicle last week Friday, he expressed concern about a number of projects that have been halted as a result of the action taken by the Opposition in the National Assembly.
Ramsammy said the deductions will stop progress as it relates to a number of undertakings through the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS).
He said, while many persons believe that this was a right move by the Parliamentary Opposition, they are not aware of the implications of the cutting.
Ramsammy mentioned a few of the areas that will be affected and how all Guyanese would be deprived of benefit from some form of development as a result.
Referring to the One Laptop Per Family (OLPF) project, he noted that, although some persons would not need the help of the Government to obtain one, there are others without the financial capacity to purchase it.
The Minister also pointed out that the country is a developing one and more than half of the citizens use the Internet daily. This has brought about a problem because the various providing entities encounter bandwith difficulties.
“If we don’t have the authority to spend that twenty something billion that was cut, in one way or another, every citizen of Guyana will be affected because some people will say: ‘I don’t really care about the one laptop, I have my own but hear how it will affect you – at certain hours in the day, when you try to get on the Internet, you know the problems you have, your bandwidth is limited in Guyana today,” Ramsammy said.

He said there is a need for the installation of the fibre optic cable, which would create unlimited capacity to access the Internet.

Capacity
“If every household in Guyana has computer and housewives and children are getting on the Internet, we don’t have the capacity to support that now. The fibre optic cable, the double fibre optic line from Molesen Creek to Anna Regina and from Lethem to Georgetown was meant to create unlimited capacity to access the Internet and for call centres to operate throughout Guyana,” the Minister explained.
Additionally, he said the laying of the fibre optic cable would have been another area for jobs creation and this has been affected. Even while it may seem as though only Government entities have been victims, jobs in the Private Sector have been cancelled, too.
Ramsammy said though the focus is on jobs for people at the Government Information Agency (GINA) and National Communications Network (NCN), actually the Private Sector will be hit because it employs the people who are going to manage and lay the fibre optic.
It is a private company that hires the people, so, in one way or another, jobs are affected not just for people in Government but throughout the Private Sector.
“So that, really, what this is all about will touch us in many ways, businesses in many ways and this is the implication of these cuts,”
he posited.
Ramsammy clarified that, whilst funding has been approved for these projects, the authority to spend that money on the commencement of works is not there.
“Funding, is assured because, remember, this funding is from LCDS and $70M has already been released by the Norwegian Government and, later this year, we should have another tranche to move that money to above a hundred million Guyana dollars,” he noted.
However he maintained that many persons are not aware that, despite the money being approved, it cannot be spent unless the approval has been given through the Appropriation Act.
Ramsammy said, though the money is there, the Government is not sure of its approval by the Opposition.
“The mistake everyone is making is that, whilst you may have money, you also have to have an authority to spend that money. That authority to spend that money is an instrument called the Appropriation Bill or the Appropriation Act. So, what has happened, is that the money is assured and it is there but the authority to spend is not there. It’s like the authority is what you need and it isn’t there. The trust is not there,” he stated.