The coalition government is being urged to set aside its complaints regarding the state of Guyana and focus on fixing the many problems in the country.
“Stop complaining and fix it,” declared opposition Member of Parliament Yvonne Pearson as she made her budget presentation on Tuesday.
Dress in her traditional Amerindian head-dress, Pearson said when the APNU+AFC took over the government in May 2015 it inherited both the good and the bad and it was time to put an end the complaints being emanating from members of the government.
The former Head of the National Toshaos Council said “When the government took over it took over the good, bad and ugly and they must now fix it because they promised to fix it… fix it, she lamented as her fellow Opposition MPs banged their desks in support of her point.
In calling for resolutions to the problems facing Guyanese, Pearson said the budget offered no support for poor people and indigenous people have lost confidence in the government.
“It is not a poor people plan.”
The Amerindian Rights Activist focused a large portion of her presentation on the provisions for Guyana’s first people and indigenous development. She was not satisfied with the provisions in the budget and said the government has failed to address the issues affecting Amerindian people.
Pearson urged the government to pay closer attention to the employment of indigenous people and reverse the path of what she called “ethnic cleansing” , that it has embarked on.
“Where are the provisions for the starvation which Amerindians were facing? I believe they are more faced with starvation now because the little that they had, was taken away,” she added. Pearson’s presentation was followed by that of the Junior Indigenous People’s Affairs Minister Valarie Lowe who argued that the hinterland and indigenous people were adequately provided for in the budget.
She said the government was not just looking to financially support the Amerindians but to make them self-sufficient through investment in agriculture, tourism and education.
The Minister said the government was very concerned about the lack of jobs in every indigenous community and promised better training for inhabitants of these communities.
“To not continue the previous government’s trend of wasting money we need to train our indigenous people and prepare them to be young entrepreneurs and for leadership roles in their communities and this is what our government will be doing”, the Minister said.
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