Nagamootoo defends budget cuts at Rosignol meet, implores slashing of bridge toll

The Alliance For Change (AFC) last evening staunchly defended opposition cuts in the budget at a public meeting at Rosignol Village and urged the government to have mercy on Berbicians and drop the fare to cross the Berbice Bridge.

Several speakers took the stage, including Member of Parliament, Moses Nagamootoo who pledged to take “this country back and recover it from the dens of thieves and buccaneers and vagabonds who have taken us to a level we have never thought we would have gone to”.

The former PPP stalwart, in explaining the budget cuts by the opposition, said that it was really $3B or thereabouts that was cut, “but that is a diversion…they are worried that we will ask them to find the money that they gave their friends to build hotels and housing projects and they want now to say we are the cause that people may be knocked off, but they hide the money”.

He said that the government gave Fip Motilall over $6B to build a road to nowhere, “… and they still got no kind of road to anywhere”. He said that this period is not election time where the AFC is coming for votes, rather it is a time for the people to keep their heads on and for education and for people to understand the issues and why the government is behaving in the way it is behaving. “Never in the history of Guyana have we got ministers protesting in the streets. Why are they on the streets placarding? Why are they on the Berbice TV stations every night? Because they know their time is up…!”

Nagamootoo boasted about the AFC’s “glorious scissors to do the cuts for the Guyanese people to cut the budget and to cut the fat and to make sure the people got something at the bottom”. He explained that the AFC did not cut money towards the sugar industry nor for electricity.

“We told GPL, we know you are like a duck that the money we gave you is like throwing water on duck’s back, but we are going to give you — you asked for $6B to bail you out, we give you $5B — come to us with a sheet to show us you will be able to cut the fat cats pay — some of the men getting $5M a month!! — at GPL and they coming to us to bail them out! — they have line losses, people thieving current, inefficiency and mismanagement of GPL…we said when you come back to us, that you are able to provide better services, prevent the blackouts … we said cut all of that out and come back to us and then we will give you the other billion? Isn’t that fair? Nagamootoo asked the crowd.

The AFC member said that it is not by chance that the government is coming to the people and using the cuts the opposition has made to discredit the AFC.

On speaking about the Customs Anti- Narcotics Unit (CANU), Nagamootoo said that the agency belongs to the police force, “put CANU where it is supposed to be, so that it can arrest drug- lords, charge them and bring them to the courts…and we can seize their property and bring the monies into the treasury”.

The AFC, he said has decided to vote $71M in the police force to relocate CANU and cut the $20M in the OP for CANU. The Ethnic Relations Commission (ERC) which was once headed by Bishop Juan Edghill (now Minister within the Ministry of Finance), Nagamootoo said, is now without a Chairman and no ERC, “and Bishop put some of his flock…the choir boys and choir girls he found some jobs for them and ask us for $80M to keep them going when there is no ERC, so we cut that— what is wrong with that?!”

He said that all of this is just the beginning of a new sign on the horizons and that the AFC intends to cut VAT by 2 per cent. Value Added Tax, he referred to as RAT— Revenue Added Tax, “a vampire tax— they are raking in $146B in taxes— it is your money they are misspending and so we in the parliament— we have made a difference and change things around in Guyana and around the world we are being admired and credited for holding this government accountable and this is only the beginning!”

He accused the government of overspending again in lavish trips abroad. “Right now (President Donald) Ramotar is abroad and he carry a ‘barriat’ with him… and he has a whole set of ministers staying at Five-Star Hotels and when they turned up in America, (US President Barack) Obama refused to meet him”. He said that Ramotar is “getting some small - levels and low - levels people in the State Department meeting he”.

Nagamootoo lambasted former President Bharrat Jagdeo for giving out a new contract for a modern airport and said that Guyana doesn’t even have a jet- plane “and we don’t even have a jackass cart and we are trying to build international airports and four-lane roads”.  He accused Jagdeo of having a big plan for operating his own airline.

If the President calls ‘snap elections’, Nagamootoo said, “he gonna be one, big, dead duck, politically! He dare not call an election! We know his number and we gonna dial that number.”

Nagamootoo also challenged the government to have mercy on Berbicians by reducing the Berbice River Bridge toll. “In Georgetown, we cross the Burnham bridge and we pay $100; here we cross the Jagdeo bridge and we have to pay $2,200!” Rosignol, he said has turned into a ghost town as opposed to what it was in the past and “we want them to reduce the crossing to $1,000 per vehicle and if they can find $19M to invest in Marriott Hotel, Marriott Hotel is not more important than the people of West Berbice! You must not pay a penalty to cross your own bridge — let them go there and find a formula — and the concessions they gave to the bridge people, the NIS money, the sugar workers money they invested there — $6B to make that bridge — it is time for pay back!”

He also made a call for the re-introduction of boats and launches to cross the Berbice River so that the business community can continue to make their livelihood. He charged too that New Amsterdam is also becoming a  ghost town since “no commuting and business takes place there”.