OPINION: Labor Day: how do Guyanese survive?

Last Updated on Friday, 1 May 2026, 8:00 by Writer

By GHK Lall

A living standard – what is that animal? What does a livable income in Guyana look like? What does it allow? How do Guyanese manage?

I begin with this basic definition: a livable income is what affords sufficient food daily, with enough left for non-food bills. To minimise, there’s this concession: no allowance for savings. The table I lay for Guyanese today, on this day for existing and retired workers, is simple, straightforward. One daily meal only for a family of two children, two adults. It doesn’t get more down-to-earth, more micro than this.

Note what’s excluded: salt, cooking gas ($5000 a cylinder – not enough money), onion, garlic, other seasonings. Bland and barebones, and the total is $2,500 for a maximum of one meal daily in oil-rich Guyana. Guyana with the most robust GDP universally. Now for some points on what tens of thousands of Guyanese exist on as a livable wage. Permit an aside.

A while back, Prof. Clive Thomas wrote that the Guyana’s then minimum wage meant that local recipients were eating less nutritionally than plantation slaves during their nightmarish era of captivity. With prices for basic food items in breakout modes today, less has to be bought, leading to a probably worse situation (even much less nutritionally) than slaves for Guyanese at the bottom of pay scales. State benefits count separately.

Next, a non-NIS senior citizen pensioner receives $46,000 monthly from the State. At $3,000 (rounded up) for one daily meal, or $90,000 a month, how do public pensioners survive? With no other income, it’s a miracle that many haven’t starved to death, more homeless. A bigger miracle is reaching next month’s pension date. A disability recipient gets $25,000 monthly, so his or her family has resources for one daily meal for almost two weeks. What after that, with two weeks in the month still ahead? The plight of the disabled (physical, otherwise) often makes them unemployable or underemployed. They struggle with $25,000 monthly, are stranded after midmonth, hang by a thread thereafter.

Then, there is the minimum wage worker at $60,147 (private sector) close to three years. He or she can afford one daily $2,500 meal for their family, and it’s over. Money finished. Real people. Real circumstances. Real tortured existence. Now compare how wage and salary upsides work.

When public servants receive an 8% or 10% raise, it’s inclusive. A junior clerk, worker, collects around $10,000 more monthly. But a minister’s increase approaches $100,000. The disparity is the reality of vastly different pay levels. It is also evidence of who has it good, and who doesn’t know where they are going day-to-day. Probably hundreds of thousands of Guyanese workers would gladly accept a minister’s package of monthly allowances in lieu of their wages. Few are the workers who wouldn’t exchange their $60,000 – $100,000 pittance for a minister’s $200,000 allowance alone. A reflection on Labour Day of who can afford to celebrate, and who lives in a state of perpetual crisis. Shortages. No solutions. Neither top-up nor backfill.

Considering pensioners, single-income workers, single-earner families, minimum-wage workers, citizens with challenges, the dollars they receive are distressing. Food prices are distressing. Then there are those other searing distresses, about which I still haven’t said one word. Shelter. Clothing. Medicines. Fruits and vegetables. Transportation. Light bill. Water bill. Communications bills. And that big, old granddaddy – the rent bill. Food alone has already swallowed all incoming monies, with not a cent left for ordinaries and emergencies. Food at an Ole Mother Hubbard cupboard level. This is how many Guyanese live. Living provisions. Living conditions. Life’s inspirations, deteriorations.

Labour Day should be every day in Guyana to expose, emphasize, how the richest citizens globally manage with life’s demands and degradations.