ALLIANCE For Change (AFC) Vice Chair, Moses Nagamootoo, has signalled an outright rejection of the support to the Guyana Power and Light (GPL) Company and the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo), even while he has also voiced an objection to more than $150M in subsidy for the Demerara Harbour Bridge, implying tacit support for an increase in

the bridge tolls.
The AFC Speaker was also accused by some members of the House of abusing his parliamentary privileges when he refused to end his presentation despite several requests by the Speaker of the House, Raphael Trotman.
Nagamootoo went over his allotted time despite urgings by the Speaker, forcing government Chief Whip, Gail Teixeira, to point out to the House that Nagamootoo had set a glaring precedent, as each member of the House had respected the time allocations.
Nagamootoo, in his presentation to the 2013 debate, called public corporations, namely GPL and GuySuCo, liabilities to the country.
He lambasted GPL as a monopoly that has to be guaranteed with state loans.
This, he said, is like throwing water on a duck’s back and he repeated the words of Shadow Finance Minister, Carl Greenidge, that the money to be pumped into GPL and GuySuCo is akin to a throwing it into a ‘black hole.’
Nagamootoo told the House that the two state run companies are inefficient and mismanaged with a plethora of waste and squandering.
He said that with the bail- out, there will be no ‘guarantee of light at the end of the tunnel.’
He also accused the government of looking to blackmail the opposition when it indicated that without the ‘capital transfer,’ the only other option would be to increase tariffs to consumers.
He suggested GuySuCo be called the Guyana Funded Corporation and pointed to what he called broken promises, especially as they relate to the capacity and delivery of the Skeldon Sugar Factory.
Nagamootoo also told the House that the AFC would be vehemently opposed to the capital transfer allocated for the Demerara Harbour Bridge.
He instead argued that the money should be allocated to the Berbice River Bridge, an imbroglio that if enacted, would mean the increase of tolls for the consumers traversing the Demerara Harbour Bridge.
“We are like a dog chasing our own tails,” said Nagamootoo, even as he turned his attention to the measures announced in the 2013 Budget, saying that in the AFC, “we are grateful for small mercies, but the budget is meaningless to the poor.”
He said that the AFC will not cut allocations in national interests, such as wages and social spending, but monies such as the $350M for expenditure by Office of the President, as well as subsidies to entities such as NCN are a different matter. “They shall not get a single cent”, he said.
Nagamootoo did concede that while fresh elections are “not an option before us…we need to sit and discuss the budget and the estimates and work out a viable solution.”