Pointing out that Guyana now earns $1.5 Billion per day from oil production, Leader of the Alliance For Change, Nigel Hughes, believes the country’s high poverty level in the face of so much resources is unacceptable.

Addressing his party’s public meeting in Linden over the weekend, Mr. Hughes said the Government has been promising to pump monies into different sectors and to increase grants, but has not outlined a plan to address poverty.

“According to the statistics we see from the World Health Organisation, 48% of us, are living in poverty, we are making oil for five years brothers and sisters and 48% by any international standard is living in poverty but if you think that bad, the World Health Organization says that 20% of our children living in extreme food poverty, that means that they are not getting the basic nutrients on any given day,” Hughes told the public meeting.

Hughes said although those figures were published in 2023, the reality of many Guyanese remain the same or has worsened.

“If after three years, of us making oil at a commercial at $65m and hour, we can’t get rid of extreme food poverty, in other words, we can’t feed our own children two basic meals with the necessary nutritional value, how on earth does the party that has us in this position come and tell you, they should get any vote at all,” Hughes questioned.

Hughes also linked the high poverty levels to the poor CSEC results in some communities, saying that is has a direct impact on the children sitting those examinations. He said the effect of that would mean that many of those students will not find decent jobs and be able to properly contribute to the country’s development.

“Pay attention brothers and sisters, you see what the system doing to you, they left you in food poverty, you hungry, you can’t learn, you cannot quality and then you cannot get the good jobs and this means in the oil economy, the foreigners have to come in the country to provide the skilled and semi-skilled labour that we should be providing,” Mr. Hughes noted.

In asking Linden for its support, the AFC leader the town has been politically persecuted and prosecuted, simply because they didn’t vote for the PPP. He said citizens must remember that when they head to the polls.

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