PRESIDENT Donald Ramotar has denounced the vicious attacks against the Government, especially the Ministry of Housing, by opposition political elements, noting that there seems to be a crusade by the opposition to taint everything with corruption.
President Ramotar on Friday night lost no time in unleashing a verbal broadside against the parliamentary opposition — APNU and the AFC.
He chose the occasion of the Third annual International Building Exposition to describe what he views as the opposition’s “crusade to taint everything the government does as corrupt…”.
“We must be determined to push ahead”, since the construction sector has become a very important sector in the economy, the President said in his feature address at the opening of the International Building Expo at the Guyana National Stadium on Friday night currently being held under the theme ‘Embracing Standards – Building the Future’.
“Sometimes, they say that successes also attract the envy and the jealous, and that is what we are seeing in a way happening in our society,” President Ramotar posited.
“It has been brought to my attention, since I came back from the CARICOM Heads of Government meeting, that there was a vicious attack against the Ministry of Housing.
“Workers were trying their best, who are doing all that they can to satisfy the needs and the demands of the population out there. People who work long days and hours, their labour is being disregarded and they are being abused by opposition political elements.
“In the same callous way that we heard when they cut our budget by some $21B and when they were told that some 250 jobs are being threatened, one comment was collateral damage. How can we speak about our own working people as collateral damage? How can we not understand that poor people, ordinary people, need to have an income? What is so difficult in understanding that?” he questioned.
“But callousness will describe that as collateral damage, and it is the same type of attitude that shows a level of ingratitude to attack the workers at the Ministry of Housing despite the gallant effort that they have been making to satisfy the housing need in this country. Shame on them!” he lashed out.
“There seems to be a mentality created to try to criticize projects that can transform our country and bring better standard of living for our people,” Ramotar observed.
“And to do that, there seems to be a direct attack and a crusade to taint everything with corruption, to say everything is corrupt. The same way they attacked us when we were building the stadium they attacked when we were building the Berbice Bridge,” he stated.
He said the government is now seeing the vicious attack being levied against the Ministry of Housing, noting: “They don’t want to see progress being made in the society, because of jealousy and because they believe that if things get bad, it would be better for them politically.
“And we cannot live in such negative feelings around us. We must be determined to push ahead, because this sector – the construction sector – has become a very, very important sector in our economy,” he encouraged.
“It has created jobs, not only in the public sector but mainly in the private sector, and it has created wealth; and in my view, it has made a major contribution in insulating us from the negative effects of the international crisis that has affected Europe and North America, and is having a major impact on the Caribbean,” he stated.
“We therefore have a vested interest to ensure that all our people have their own homes; and in so doing, we know that we are also driving the economy and driving the social sector, because it is creating other linkages, more schools, more public buildings,” he posited.
President Ramotar said the government has to build new technical institutes to create new skills for the people.
“Government has used all kinds of creative measures to ensure that we have projects that will benefit our people. We known that one of the difficulties we have is cheap electricity, and that is why we are determined that we will get hydro-power in this country, so that we can accelerate the economic development in Guyana,” he reiterated.
Recently, it was reported in some sections of the media that A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) had called for an independent enquiry into the process of mismanaging the distribution of house lots following a ‘One Stop Shop’ held at the Guyana National Stadium.