–after previously saying only PNC/R people would get ‘wuk,’ ‘there is no magic wand’ to create jobs while in office

THE A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), which had previously said that only card-bearing members of the People’s National Congress Reform (PNC/R) and loyalists would get jobs, has now promised to provide jobs on a fair basis.

APNU candidate, Isiah Singh at the party’s recent public meeting in Bagotville, accused the government of elitism and promised that if elected, his party would create more jobs.
“We will have good jobs not a set of elite people only getting a certain job that don’t have the qualification for,” Singh said, claiming that these “elite” people only have “party cards.”
However, one of the most senior figures of the PNC/R, former Minister of Public Health and then-PNC/R Chairwoman Volda Lawrence, had openly admitted to APNU+AFC’s hiring practices based solely on political loyalty.

In 2018, Lawrence declared her intention to give work to only party supporters and friends.
“The only friends I got is PNC so the only people I gon give wuk to is PNC and right now I looking for a doctor who can talk Spanish or Portuguese and ah want one that is PNC,” Lawrence is quoted as saying.

Lawrence never denied making the statements publicly, and did not address the criticisms she received as a result of the publication of her statements.
This openly partisan stance was not an isolated situation as it reflected the wider employment policy of the-then APNU+AFC regime.
While the APNU’s last term in office left thousands of persons unemployed, the current People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) has highlighted that it restored and created in excess of 60,000 jobs since entering office in 2020.

APNU promised high salaries and worker training despite heavily taxing the working-class during its tenure in office from 2015-2020.
Just one year after being elected to office, then President, David Granger was on record saying: “There is no magic wand. The government cannot provide jobs in the government service, in the police force or the defence force.”

Granger had said: “Employment is not something to be provided by the government. There is self-employment and we are working with the villages to generate more employment in those villages but it is going to be agro-based employment.”

The APNU and its coalition partner, AFC, however, took persons out of jobs instead of creating opportunities, as was seen in the sugar industry.
Under the APNU+AFC administration, sugar workers were begging for their livelihoods to be spared, even going so far as to hold pickets with heartfelt pleas in the scorching sun, at the time. However, the then government turned a deaf ear to the cries of those workers.

In 2017, the coalition government had announced the closure of several sugar estates across the country, leaving thousands of persons without jobs or sources of income. The move saw four sugar estates being closed and over 7,000 sugar workers losing their jobs.