With the registration process for the Government’s $100,000 cash grant still targeting pensioners and public servants with no clear timeline for completion, the opposition Working People’s Alliance said the Government should seek help from other players in the society to ensure the successful distribution of the grant.

At a press conference today, Co-leader of the WPA, Dr David Hinds said it appears clear that the Government is out of its depth with the systems that should be in place for the distribution of the grant.

“If the government wants to get some help from us, in how to salvage this fiasco, we are quite willing to meet. Because for us, political contestation is not an end in itself. We contest in the political arena but at the end of the day, this country belongs to all of us,” Hinds said during a press conference today. 

The grant is being made available to Guyanese who are 18 years and older. Only half of the estimated 600,000 persons are likely to get the grant before the end of the year. The others will have to wait until next year’s national budget.

Dr Hinds said in the future, there needs to be widespread consultation on cash transfers with the aim of arriving at the best possible solution. 

“It is perhaps the single most important intervention at the human level, and therefore, we feel that all parties, need to be part of its implementation. WPA has a detail proposal on how we feel it should be done, from a pilot study and feasibility study to the point of distribution, however, we do not have the monopoly on how it is done. There are ideas floating around out there, ideas from the PNC, ideas from the AFC, some little ideas from persons within the PPP, and so therefore, we think we need to sit down and come to a common agreement,” he said. 

Dr Hinds said that the cash transfer should also be enshrined in the laws of the country.

Meanwhile, Executive Member of the WPA, Dr Clive Thomas underscored the need for a social and economic audit of the current cash grant when the distribution is completed.

He said while a financial audit is important and is mandated by law, a socio-economic audit provides insight into the processes and implementation of the policy. 

“What we want to do is to make sure that we don’t repeat the errors that we made in this particular attempt in the future. And therefore, one way to avoid that is to do an audit, and not a financial audit, although that is very important to establish that funds were fairly and accurately and honestly spent, but a social and economic audit to ensure as far as the public is concern that we did a very best type of operational executive exercise that was possible, and to learn of any failure that we might have come across,” Dr Thomas said. 

According to Dr. Thomas, an audit would also be able to provide stakeholders with pertinent information which could be an asset in similar undertakings in the future.  

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