OPINION: Cost-of-living v. minimum wage: how do some Guyanese survive?

Last Updated on Sunday, 12 January 2025, 13:53 by Writer

By GHK Lall

It is the longest running open secret in Guyana. Secret cannot be the word. Not when probably hundreds of thousands of Guyanese live with a searing reality. Their money can’t meet, don’t meet. They don’t know the last time, year, when their money matched their expenses, their living demands, needs. I am not thinking of caviar and champagne citizens of Guyana. I am thinking of bread-and-butter citizens: minimum wage workers, junior public servants, pensioners, part-time workers, those suffering from disabilities and on some type of disability income. How do they manage? Not with their barebones expenses. How do they manage to live?

“Cost of living far outstrips minimum wage” (Demerara Waves Online News, January 08, 2025) presents a picture that is so scorching that smoke spirals. I make allowance for the Georgetown-focused numbers, but the total package cannot be far from $148,000 needed to cope with monthly expenses for one adult. Rent of $60,000 could be eliminated for the country areas, but if a junior public servant in the $94,000 – $140,000 monthly range could be falling behind, then I shudder to think of those dealing with much lower income as a matter of norm. Minimum wage workers fall into this category with their level last set at $60,147 back in 2022. The question is how do they survive, especially in single income homes. What quality of family life, what kind of home is that of a minimum wage worker, with possibly no other kind of earnings coming to hand? However close to hard reality (it’s not far) that $148,000 needed for monthly necessities is, and I believe that it is very close, a Guyanese minimum wage worker grappling with the fearful: an $80,000 deficit monthly.

Then, there are those with no income at all, save for the government’s senior citizen pension, for which I am using this year’s higher number of $40,000 monthly. They are worse off than minimum wage workers and have no prospects for more through overtime or side jobs. There are 76,000 senior pensioners on the rolls at last count. Grown children, overseas-based children, may help to smooth the sharp edges and rough moments, but those have to be continual infusions of assistance. For senior citizen pensioners who also collect an NIS pension, managing is still a challenge. The austerity of way before and even up to recently can be understood and overlooked. But what about today in a Guyana awash with great statistics and a storm of economic activities? Hardships and guava seasons in the years prior to this century and the first two decades of the millennium have good grounds and could be rationalized to some degree.

But where Guyanese are today with cost of living versus minimum wage, cost of living and lower level public servants, and cost of living in the life of pensioners, there can be no excuse, no logic, no acceptable explanation. I refrain from taking apart representations made by the PPP Government and Vice President Jagdeo. The latter has imprisoned himself in a world that suits his narratives and props up his talking points. One of which was how much the government’s treasury can afford. How can it have much of anything to spare when record national budgets are committed overwhelmingly in favor of infrastructure. In the United States, the perennial debate is between guns and butter (military needs versus social needs). In Guyana, the parallel under the PPP Government is between public works spending and catering to the needs of struggling, dragging, Guyanese. Public works win, Guyanese lose.

Another point made by the honorable vice president is that the minimum wage for public servants soared from US$25 in the 1990s to over US$500 today. On paper that looks most impressive, but Dr. Jagdeo found some convenient hole in which to bury prices, foreign exchange rates, wages that fail to keep abreast of prices, among other valuable elements that depress the existence of Guyanese. In the now characteristic Jagdeo fashion, he weighs down his representations with what favors his postures, while ignoring the great, big developments of recent years. Oil money is one. How it is being spent is another, with few fooled with that laughable sleight-of-hand called “national development priorities.” Priorities of who and for whom, Dr. Jagdeo? There are about 30,000 junior public servants, 76,000 pensioners, several tens of thousands of NIS pensioners, and countless thousands of minimum wage workers, who are living a Guyanese nightmare. Cost of living is stripping their existence of meaning, of dignity, and of any manner of confidence.

Guyana is producing 650,000 barrels of oil daily, and thousands of Guyanese are living out of the scrapings of a barrel. This shouldn’t be a point of disagreement anymore in this country, and Dr. Jagdeo knows this, no matter the gloss he puts on his narratives and postures. It shouldn’t even be a matter of discussion anymore, since the economic wherewithal is in hand, even at 2% and the rest. I think, and I know that Dr. Jagdeo knows this, there has to be serious interest in looking out for the people, and less of the budget money that is so lavishly dedicated to infrastructure. To spend on sand and steel is setting the stage for self-enrichment. To spend with that single-minded focus is to sacrifice the wellbeing of the people, to hang them on their hopes. Both the infrastructure and social welfare constituents can coexist and work in lockstep going forward. Greater balance, a narrower gap, would help immensely in creating a fairer, better, healthier Guyana.