OPINION: Cost of living drumbeat goes on – a continuing stain on Guyana

Last Updated on Thursday, 26 September 2024, 20:39 by Writer

by GHK Lall

Talk about beating a drum at compelling volume with consistent intensity, and Stabroek News, it is. The relentless drumbeat that overpowers consciousness is all in the crescendo of its weekly strikes with the drumsticks through its Cost of Living series. The SN series does have some jarring thunder to it, competes even with the likes of the all-time bongo and tom-tom greats, such as Buddy Rich, Max Roach, and John Bonham. It is surprising that more PPP Government operators have not filed noise nuisance and disturbing-the-peace complaints against the paper. In section 94 of its Cost of Living series, SN recorded a perfect 10. That is, all 10 of the 10 residents of Lamaha Springs, Georgetown interviewed had something less than positive to share about the impact of prices (cost of living) on their existence. To be harsh, the comments were heavy with agony. On behalf of the Lamaha Springs Guyanese, pummeled and wounded by high prices, rising prices, and pocket-squeezing prices, let this word go forth to all corners of the PPP Government and leadership: take all those gaudy statistics and indexes and shove them where civilized people recoil from venturing.

Whether eking out a hardscrabble daily existence in Lamaha Springs or Springlands, these Guyanese are the best experts about prices and disposable income and purchasing power and the velocity of money in the local arena. As said before, the grim reality about prices for basic food items is that they are ruinous. Ordinary Guyanese struggle to cope. Regarding disposable income, that sweet sounding ditty can be taken literally: use it and that is the end of it (and the spender too). In terms of purchasing power, the best that can be said is that it is of much shorter duration than GPL blackouts. Or grandiose but meaningless presidential speeches about all that has been done, but which still leaves hungry Guyanese gasping for breath, and hands extended for any relief that comes their way. Is anybody listening in the PPP Government, cares to do anything, beside engaging in some soundbite prattling? Is the People’s Progressive Party still a political group that is made of living people? Or is it merely a battalion of tone-deaf walking zombies, and nothing but frightening apparitions of the living dead? People are crying for help in Guyana’s economic wilderness, but nobody is responding. Oh, and that fancy footwork one called velocity of money, cash-strapped Guyanese know one thing: in hand now, and gone with the wind in the next instant. Prices, higher prices, still higher prices, with relentless monotony. In essence, that is the range and frequency of their velocity of money. It is a one-time affair – done and gone in a jiffy – leaving those who hand once held a dollar wondering if they truly had one.

To the well-nourished President Ali and the equally sprightly Vice President Jagdeo, Guyanese are shrinking from the daily assaults and batteries endured from spiraling prices. Please hear them and do something, oh learned and wise ones. Posing for the cameras and rattling off ecstatic statistics into the microphones do not count. Let us all get real, for those are real people who are really hurting and growing hungrier out there. It is said that a mind is a terrible thing to waste. The belief in this neck of the environment is that richness when squandered is an even more unforgivable exercise in leadership folly. No aspersions are cast today at anyone for any nefarious activity with infrastructure money, or the inspiringly serene statistical heaven in which so many Guyanese reside. To add to the president’s and vice president’s already big books of wisdom, there are cheering statistics and then there is the gnawing of gastritis or colitis. A chronic lack of food, or the wrong type of foods necessitated by circumstances, has something to do with both. It is a hard guava season.

Last, the United Nations General Assembly is a great place to talk about equity. It is said that charity begins at home, so let there be a start here. A little equity in the distribution of the rich resources of all the Guyanese to all the Guyanese people would be putting one’s money where their mouth is. Beautiful speeches are the nectar of a politician’s life. The jolting reality, the heavy contradiction, still not faced are all those cash-strapped and food-famished Guyanese. They are talking to SN week after week and baring their cost of living woes in the land reputed to be the most luscious since the Garden of Eden and Ayodhya and the ornate fountains of Jahangir combined. There is need and pain in this rich land. This week there were those 10 residents in Lamaha Springs. Next week’s Cost of Living instalment from SN is guaranteed to present more Guyanese whose cork is being ducked by prices. The drumbeat goes on: prices are killing, cost of living is crippling. Somebody, please do something soon.