APART from the 2023/2024 budget presentation being way too long, Movement for Social Justice (MSJ) political leader David Abdulah said it lacked vision.
Abdulah said Finance Minister Colm Imbert failed say exactly how government is going to harness, manage and use some of the country’s resources to achieve objectives set out in a longer-term plan.
He chastised him for using the budget to announce $1 billion back pay for some 37,000 public-sector workers who accepted the governemnt's four per cent wage offer, saying back pay is a legal entitlement and not a “gift” from government.
“To talk about it being done before Christmas is to push the narrative that the government cares. Santa Claus is for children.
“The fact is that the minister via the CPO (Chief Personnel Officer) engaged in bad-faith bargaining with the unions, railroaded the negotiations into the essential services division of the Industrial Court, which then announced that it could only award increases for a ten-year period (two five-year contracts), and obtained an ex-parte injunction in the dead of night to stop teachers from resting and reflecting.”
Saying there had been a decline in the standard of living over the past eight years, Abdulah identified some contributing factors and expectations that these realities would have begun to change.
He pointed to a near-wage freeze, skyrocketing food, transport and other costs, deteriorating roads, escalating crime, water becoming an almost nonexistent commodity, a failed education system, farmers and fisherfolks struggling to survive, while the trade unions have come under serious attack.
“Nobody expected instant change, but the people are entitled to be given some real sense of hope that the future will be better, that their lives will improve.
“Such hope would also rest on some clear timelines of when policies and expenditures announced in the budget would yield actual results. Anything else would be just ole talk.
“In the MSJ’s considered view, Mr Imbert’s budget failed this test. There was no sense of a vision for the nation and, we are reminded of the biblical injunction – 'Where there is no vision, the people perish.'
“There was nothing to suggest that the economy will be transformed. A lot of what was said related to announcements made in previous budgets. In other words – it is business as usual, hoping that our energy sector and construction projects will keep us limping along.
Borrowing a phrase from the late Lloyd Best to describe government’s policies, Abdulah said Imbert “chinksed” when it came to improving people’s lives.
He said the minimum-wage worker is not better off than 2019 as the $3 or 17 per cent increase is less than the increase in food and transportation prices in the last four years.
Of the book grant, he recalled this existed many years ago, suggesting what have been more innovative, was a measure to ensure students access all books online for free, supplemented by books being available from the school as previously happened.
“There was nothing that g
