By Shaquawn Gill
GUYANA is in a very unique place in its history and among its counterparts in the Western Hemisphere.

In the process of what seems to be monumental transformation, the government has to contend with demands from sections of society to apparently make all the country’s issues disappear immediately. One of those issues, though not isolated to Guyana, is poverty reduction and eradication.

However, the path that Guyana should take to eradicate poverty is usually up for debate. China, a new global powerhouse, also has the issue of poverty but has made significant strides in addressing the scourge.

The World Bank reported in 1990 that more than 750 million people lived below the international poverty line, which stood at US$1.90 a day. This accounted for, at the time, 66 per cent of the country’s population.

By 2012, Professor Wang Sangui from the College of Agriculture and Rural Development at the Renmin University of China, noted that the number stood at 98.99 million people, a humongous decrease.

These figures were also confirmed by the World Bank. But what is responsible for China’s success in poverty reduction?

At the publication of this article, I would have spent some eight weeks in the People’s Republic of China, interacting with high-level professors, politicians, business moguls and diplomats. With Guyana’s ability to implement mechanisms to reduce poverty, I thought it would be remiss of me not to ask for salient advice on this issue.

Visiting the Party School of the Communist Party of China, I asked the question every Guyanese would pay to get the answer to – What advice would you give to Guyana to reduce poverty?
The response was mind-boggling: “Poverty reduction is not philanthropy,” one senior lecturer at the school posited.

This made me think of Guyana, where persons in authority are aware of this critical piece of advice.

Human resource development (education), urbanisation, industrialisation, and employment opportunities were the specific mechanisms pinpointed by the experts, shunning the doling out of direct cash transfers or “handouts” and immediate salary spikes.

Though clear evidence exists on how the standard of living can be improved through these targeted mechanisms, a motion emanated from the Parliamentary opposition requesting that the government gives every Guyanese citizen over the age of 18 a payment of $200,000 every quarter. I shudder to think that such a proposal would make its way to the floor of the National Assembly.

Fortunately, the investments we have actually seen since we drew first oil have been in the direction of what we have seen brought and continues to bring China great success (President Xi Jinping announced in 2021 that they saw some 100 million people lifted out of poverty in eight years).

In terms of human and economic development, more than 13,000 scholarships have been awarded for Guyanese to attain higher education, 7,000 people were trained in technical and vocational areas in 2022 according to the Board of Industrial Training, agro-processing and local manufacturing have increased significantly with an ambitious goal of making manufacturing more lucrative through the gas-to-shore project, among many others.

Following some aspects of the Chinese model, this may be the exact answer to the woes of poverty in our country. I must conclude that I am excited to see what happens next.