AGRICULTURE Minister, Zulfikar Mustapha has said that the government will continue to bring equal opportunities to all the people of Guyana and will ensure that all communities are sustainable and play a role in development.
Mustapha made those remarks during a visit to the Santa Aratack community in Region Three, where he highlighted that the President and government have prioritised visiting communities across the country to interact with people and bring development projects.
According to him, this holds significant importance, given that Indigenous communities, along with others, were previously neglected and had their benefits revoked by the previous APNU+AFC administration.
However, he said that whilst in opposition, the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) had said that it would bring those benefits back and bring development all across Guyana.

“When we went to the electorate of this country, we went with a vision, we went with a promise, we went with a list of commitments… [and] we will ensure that we deliver all those commitments,” he said.
With that, he indicated that it is the philosophy of the government and the President to be hand-on and on the ground and that was evident by President Ali’s presence in that and other villages around the country.
Mustapha said, “He wants to come himself, he wants to listen to you, he wants to empower you, those are the philosophy of our party and the government and that is what the President has been doing, because, when you look less than four years in gov’t we said in five years’ time we will deliver all these commitments to you; less than four years… we have delivered on all the commitment we have made to the people of this country.”

As such, he highlighted some of the commitments made that were delivered, which included bringing back the “Because We Care” cash grant and having it expanded to both public and private schools and even increasing it to $45,000.
The agriculture minister added that every community in the country must benefit from the rapid transformation that was taking place and must play a role in the country’s growth.
With that in mind, he remarked, “We are bringing equal opportunities to the people of our country.”

Meanwhile, Mustapha said that when one looks at Guyana, the country is moving rapidly in every sector as development was being seen and fostered across the board.
“Every single sector we have seen massive allocation budgetary allocation, massive expenditure in these sectors. Why we are doing it? Because we want to modernise our country, we want our country to move up to be a country to be reckoned with,” he emphasised.
On this note, he told residents of Santa Aratack that each community has to be sustainable and a plan must and will be put in place to ensure that the community becomes viable and produces its own products.
Against this backdrop, he said that the community was ideally located to have tourism and to have agriculture and further have agrotourism rapidly develop there.
Further to this, he assured that the government will return to the community soon and follow up on the implementation of plans to ensure that it becomes self-sufficient, viable and contributes to Guyana’s development.