From journalist Imran Khan
10 reasons why the $10,000 (US$50) is nothing but political gimmickry:
1. Thousands upon thousands of people are living in squalor and extreme poverty in Guyana - Plastic City, Tiger Bay, Albouystown, Anna Catherina, Bare Root etc; there is little to no hope of their conditions improving owing to widescale mismanagement, corruption, discrimination and economic victimization.
2. Health care is in a disastrous state - mothers in labour regularly dying at public health care institutions; lack of medicine and drugs at hospitals and health centres; persons with minor medical conditions dying in the care of public hospitals; pregnant women having to deliver babies in the washrooms of public hospitals; pregnant women having to share beds at the nation's premier medical institution.
3. Thousands without potable water in their homes.
4. Thousands who receive potable water provided with a nasty, grimy, thick sludgy brew; and even this being rationed with long daily periods when the *water* supply is turned off.
5. Hundreds of thousands having to suffer blackouts on a daily and nightly basis.
6. Unemployment rates sky high; thousands of young people without jobs; thousands of seasonal and other workers losing jobs and economic opportunity on an annual basis.
7. Guyana's suicide rate highest in the world. HIGHEST IN THE WORLD!
8. Corruption at an all time high. Guyana among the most corrupt state in the western hemisphere and one of the most corrupt in the world. A state of complete lawlessness pervades. No justice for the poor. Murderers with money and connections get off scot free. One man who was recorded on video shooting another man to death walks free; another murder accused had a high end motor cycle waiting for him after his court appointment and he rode off afterward, seemingly knowing that he would have been set free before the court proceedings had begun.
9. 7 out of 10 school children not being able to read properly; education in a state of continued disaster.
10. Migration rates continuing to soar with persons leaving for just about anywhere else and enduring inhuman conditions, including living in fowl pens and overcrowded cramped apartments, just to escape the misery of life in Guyana.
This is the reality of life in Guyana for the masses. The privileged few with connections to the cabal in power live a life of luxury by leaching off of state resources and flagrantly brandish their lifestyle to the poor and powerless.