GENERAL Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo has rubbished misguided commentary on a ‘minimum threshold’ of basic needs required for a decent life, at his weekly press conference at Freedom House.
At the time, the General Secretary was addressing misconceptions presented by a columnist regarding Dr. Ashni Singh, a senior Minister responsible for Finance and Public Service within the Office of the President, during his budget presentation on January 15.
He said, “First and foremost, we are building a Guyana where every single Guyanese family will be in a position to meet their most basic needs relative to a minimum threshold required to enjoy a decent life.”
During his news conference on Thursday, Jagdeo said, “We need to ensure that people understand the Minister said ‘minimum threshold’.
First of all, in the budget, the Minister defined two key objectives of what we are working towards – first, this minimum threshold that we must work to accomplish for all our people; and secondly, creating the conditions for wealth creation. So, two objectives that we are working toward – he [Minister Ashni Singh] defined it as an expansion of household wealth…it is a concept that is impregnated with a lot of ideas. It is a broad-reaching concept and unfortunately, the person who wrote this missed that”.
The Vice President added, “…the Minister made it clear that we must not view the minimum threshold – and I quote ‘through narrow and simplistic monetary and fixed income lenses. The columnist quotes this, but then proceeds to do exactly that…to view the definition of minimum threshold as a fixed income or monetary threshold, when the Minister made it clear – and I have spoken about this as well – that we are redefining these concepts.
“For example, in the health sector, we are redefining primary health care to include a higher level of care, which would include higher access to CT scans, free CT scans, access to free ultrasound, access to several free tests, which in the past you had to pay for and were defined as tertiary care.
We are moving it from tertiary, paid care, delivered by the private sector into the category of primary health care now, because we want the quality of primary health care to grow and that is one of the objectives of us building out the news hospitals, with new facilities, to ensure that we can deliver on this redefined object or redefined concept of primary health care.”
Jagdeo, who was a former President of Guyana, said, “Similarly, we have said that every Guyanese in this country must have a minimum threshold in terms of the quality of life. It is not a minimum income. It is not a minimum fixed income. It is not a monetary target that we are heading towards, but a minimum threshold for quality of life and quality of services delivered by the State – that the State would almost guarantee. And that involves, as the Minister pointed out, several things.”
CLEAR CONTEXT
Additionally, Minister Singh had said: “First and foremost, we are building a Guyana where every single Guyanese family will be in a position to meet their most basic needs relative to a minimum threshold required to enjoy a decent life. I hasten to add that this threshold is not to be viewed through narrow and simplistic monetary and fixed income lenses, but instead is to be viewed from a multi-dimensional perspective”.
He had said: “Every single Guyanese family should have access to decent housing including the potential to own their own home; sufficient nutritious food to experience zero hunger; good quality healthcare from conception to old age; relevant educational and skills training opportunities to equip those of employable age for the world of work; potable water and sanitation; and recreational facilities to support healthy living. It will be noted that these necessities matter not only for current comfort but, even more importantly, for long-term economic empowerment.”
OBJECTIVE ONE
The PPP General Secretary explained that the focus on a minimum threshold relates to a quality-of-life metric.
“It is not a fixed income metric. However, this column confuses the whole issue, because they didn’t read carefully what the minister said…sometimes people miss the concepts and they go back to their old understanding of things,” the General Secretary noted.
Explaining objective one, the minimum threshold of deliverables that the Government must work towards delivering to all Guyanese, Jagdeo said, “We want to eliminate poverty totally. We want to ensure that every Guyanese is living in a decent place that they own or can afford to rent. We want to make sure that we have high-quality health care for all our people.
We want to make sure that every child or every adult, if they want to study and improve themselves, that there are opportunities for them to do so. We want to make sure that everybody lives in safety by investing in the security sector [so] that they can live free of fear.
We want to ensure that people live in a democratic society. This is the minimum threshold that we are talked about.”
He clarified that the PPP/C administration believes that the State “must guarantee this minimum” to all Guyanese.
OBJECTIVE TWO
On objective two, creating the conditions for wealth creation, he noted that the PPP/C government is committed to creating the conditions for the Guyanese citizenry to succeed.
Jagdeo said, “The second objective, do we only want the minimum for our people? We believe that the State, but beyond the minimum, we want every Guyanese to become wealthy, through their own efforts. So, the State guarantees the minimum, and then you create the conditions for people to grow their wealth – personal wealth, household wealth, business wealth – whatever their endeavours are; you create the conditions for them to grow income and wealth”.
The Vice President said, “…we would like to see all of our people become wealthy and we believe that they can do so. So they are not bound by the minimum threshold that the State will guarantee…you’re not bound by that…through your own efforts – through investments or through higher education to make yourself more marketable and get higher income…. these are the two key objectives that we are working towards.”
The PPP General Secretary charged that the PPP/C government’s efforts, policies, programmes and initiatives have been, and will continue to be people-centred.
“When the Opposition says it is not a people-centred budget, or it is not a Budget for poor people, they miss the concept. The concept explains it all. They lost sight of that because they probably are deluded by similar thinking (as the columnist),” he declared.
The PPP/C government on January 15 tabled its fifth national budget – a $1.146 trillion budget for 2024 – in the National Assembly, making history, as it is the biggest budget to date, which contains a mix of people-centred measures while forecasting positive economic performance for the upcoming year. It was also fully financed with no new taxes. (DPI)