Adopting the World Bank’s ‘Strategy for reducing poverty in Guyana’ over 30 years ago, publishing the ‘Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper’ in 2001 and establishing the Poverty Reduction Strategy Secretariat to implement the Participation Action Plan were hopeful steps towards poverty reduction in Guyana. Several years later, however, the PPP administration’s enthusiasm evaporated as it expressed disappointment over the ‘poor results’ before abandoning the strategy altogether.
Former President David Granger, speaking on the programme – The Public Interest – reminded that Guyana’s commitment to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals obligated it to achieve Goal No. 1 − to eradicate extreme poverty and to halve all other forms of poverty by 2030. The State has a duty, thereby, to extend public services in order to prevent poverty by ensuring people’s access to adequate food, clean drinking water and sanitation’. Further, Guyana apparently ignored last year’s launch of the multilateral ‘Global Alliance Against Poverty and Hunger’ proposed by the Federative Republic of Brazil to accelerate efforts to implement SDGs 1 and 2 – no poverty and zero hunger.
Granger pointed out that, despite Guyana’s increased GDP and its boast of having one of the fastest-growing economies in the hemisphere, its poverty rate is among the highest in Latin America and the Caribbean. A large portion of its population is actually poor and subsisting in conditions that perpetuate poverty and prevent people from attaining a good life. Factors that contribute to poverty include unsatisfactory food and drinking water; unsafe neighbourhoods; unsettled working conditions; unsanitary living and housing conditions; unequal access to justice; untrustworthy law-enforcement and state officials; inadequate access to education and health deva and unrewarding employment.
Salaries and wages for a large number of state employees – public servants; public health workers; public education teachers; public corporation employees and public security forces – are barely sufficient to feed their families. Hinterland and rural coastland villages, where the majority of people live, endure a high incidence of poverty and extreme poverty.
For this reason, the APNU+AFC Coalition appointed a Minister of Rural Affairs, supported grassroots programmes – such as the Regional Agricultural and Commercial Exhibitions (RACE); Rural Agricultural Infrastructure Development (RAID); Rural Enterprise and Agricultural Development Project (READ) and Regional Economic Agricultural Insurance Programme (REAP) – which were all aimed at improving the living conditions of poor rural and hinterland households. The succeeding PPP administration cold-bloodedly abandoned these anti-poverty initiatives.
Granger expressed the opinion that poverty exists amid plenty in Guyana only because of the Government’s misguided policies and misplaced priorities. He doubted that this country will be able to eradicate poverty by 2030 unless the PPP administration changes its policy radically over the next five years. The administration needs to increase investment in the rural economy to enable it to generate the wealth that would promote economic growth, create employment and allow for poverty reduction; to improve productivity and to extend public infrastructure, especially farm-to-market roads and riverine transport.
The former president emphasised that the PPP administration is the first Government in Guyana’s history with access to petroleum profits on the present scale. Given the gravity of poverty, however, it would be expedient to resuscitate the defunct Poverty Reduction Strategy Secretariat, establish a new Ministry of Food to emphasise food security for poor people’s everyday survival, engage in economic restructuring, expand rural employment opportunities, energise equitable economic growth and, thereby, achieve SDG 1 by eradicating poverty by 2030.