Allen says farm production low, Sawh counters with investment list
BY William Walker
A country full of sunshine with bounteous fruits and vegetables feeding a smiling healthy nation. Or a broken-down farm system in a country full of undernourished children scared to go to the hospital. Both visions were presented at the budget debate yesterday. PNC member Ivor Allen called the much-maligned budget an "unrealistic band aid" for the problems of poverty and malnutrition. He then ran off a series of statistics on plummeting farm production: cassava production in 1992 - 30,800 tons, in 1998 26,000; eddoes down, cabbages down, tomatoes, citrus, pineapples, bananas down, down, down. Undeniable evidence, he said, that the government was doing nothing in the areas of drainage and irrigation, market to road infrastructure, land reform. Indeed, a very bleak picture. But Minister of Fisheries, Crops and Livestock, Satyadeow Sawh, who knows his apples from his oranges was not fooled and when his turn came to speak he pointed out that Allen's statistics were conveniently selected from the year of El Nino which has been blamed for almost everything but was certainly crucial in the devastation of the nation's crops. There was silence from the opposition benches and Allen reached for the water jug. Allen had ploughed through the government's "failure to address" the problems of NARI and the New Guyana Marketing Corporation and had noted that even the cows were emigrating with 60,000 having left since 1995. Meanwhile, one million tons of peanuts had poured into the country. Where was the agricultural diversification and the big plan, he asked. Sawh promptly told him but not until he had given the PNC a good roasting over its allegations of a visionless budget. "While they were churning out empty slogans year after year the people's tummies were rumbling," and he would give his version of the last 20 years or so. For the Honourable Member's information he ran off a long list of investments in his sector including chicken farms, kiln dryers and tropical fish farms - all working out to billions of dollars and many jobs. There was diversification into coffee, pineapple slabs, heart of palm, even local eggs being sold in Suriname. This was a land of sunshine growth, where according to "our great leader Cheddi, everything going to be alright! Not the land of insects, pests and parasites of the PNC when our people were forced to flee." And a misty-eyed Sawh added, "of all the people, it is our hardworking farmers and their families who have made this all possible," drawing agreement from the opposition. Still unsatisfied that those across the floor were yet to see the fullness of the PPP's wisdom, he whipped out the 1990 speech of then minister of finance, Carl Greenidge. "Sugar ouput fell to 130,000 tonnes in 1989, rice lowest in 14 years, livestock down by 30%," he read. Turning to Budget 2000: "sugar in 1999 - 321,000 tonnes, rice up by 7.6%, livestock production up sharply. That is why CARICOM has designated Guyana as the country to ensure the food security of the region.... And we will spend $1.3 billion on drainage this year... rebuild 25 miles of farm to market roads." Not too much was coming from the PNC backbenchers, who by this time had been warned by Speaker Derek Jagan about their heckling. With little time remaining for his actual speech, Sawh reeled it off as if it were a shopping list, before being cut off somewhere at fish. With the weather outside suitably changing from sunshine to a howling gale and back again, PNC member Dr Dalgleish Joseph rose to give his version of the "disaster" that is health care in Guyana. The government's policy towards HIV/AIDS was "a disaster", the Public Hospital Georgetown "is a disaster in the making." But he did not wish to make political gains from such an issue, he said. He talked of the graveyard of broken equipment at the hospital, no respirators; anaesthetic machines being wheeled around from ward to ward; a central sterilisation unit of which only one piece of equipment is working; unattractive salaries; no programme to educate staff, "I can go on..." "Please don't," the PPP politely asked. So Joseph gave his version of health care under the PNC, conjuring up visions of impossibly white sheets, smiling nurses and "efficient and effective delivery systems." Free house lots for all nurses who return to Guyana, he proposed. The rest of his speech was dedicated to reading a report on the "poorly managed" blood laboratories. Minister of Health and Labour, Dr Henry Jeffrey took the high road momentarily, quoting from George Eliot and Abraham Lincoln but was soon laying into the opposition. He recalled the "glorious years" Joseph was so fond of: no drugs and the resident rats biting little children's hands and "the scissors...well that's another story." He accused Joseph of creating a "major, major ethical problem" for taking information from colleagues to use in the debate suggesting that were he working for a private employer he would have been fired. "Lock he up!" parliamentarians from both sides wailed. By this time Jeffrey was close to the 15-minute warning to finish his speech and started on the five pillars of a good health sector. The first pillar was individual responsibility; Jeffrey urged citizens to eat well, avoid smoking and fast mini buses and use condoms. This included avoiding accidents at the work place of which there were 2,370 in 1999. This emphasis on individual responsibility did not mean government deniability and he informed the honourable members that the government had a three-year $400 million plan to deal with AIDS. Jeffrey noted that the greatest difficulty was to change the behaviour of persons who were fully aware of the dangers. Pillar number two: participating institutions with clear mandates. Pillar number three: to maximize the use of limited resources. Jeffrey noted that Guyana spends a mere US$50 per year per capita on health care compared to US$400 in Trinidad and Us$600 in Barbados. Pillar number four: public/private cooperation; this means the sharing of dialysis or cat scan machines between public and private hospitals. Pillar number five: Caribbean cooperation. Jeffrey was left with little time for his labour portfolio, but noted inter alia, that the PNC "having realised they can't be a national power have decided to become a national nuisance."
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