Movement for Social Justice (MSJ) leader David Abdulah says Friday’s Spotlight on the Economy shows that the Government’s focus is not the needs of the people.
Abdulah was speaking at the MSJ’s news conference yesterday in which he gave his take on the event featuring Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley and Finance Minister Colm Imbert.
Explaining that an economy is about how the resources of a country are organised through policies to ensure the needs of the people are met, he said neither the Minister nor the Prime Minister addressed this on Friday.
“So today our focus is not spotlight on the economy our focus is spotlight on the people, that’s where it should begin,” Abdulah said.
With school reopening today, he accused the Government of failing to meet the educational needs of young people. He noted that the MSJ had proposed some time ago that all primary and secondary school textbooks be available in digital form.
“Why haven’t we organised with all of the extra windfall money that we collected? According to the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Finance, we collected some $8 billion more in revenue than was anticipated in September/October last year when the budget was prepared and presented in early October.
“So why haven’t we put some of that money to ensure that all the textbooks are digitised and made available to our school children in electronic form? They could download it, it could be done through our secure Ministry of Education portal so you don’t get all kinds of copying, so that each child could be given a particular number to access the books that he or she may need in his or her class and those things could be downloaded for that child. We make sure that all the children have available hardware, laptops or tablets and so on that would enable the download of those books...Wouldn’t that make sense?”
He said this approach is also environmentally friendly and would also spare children from carrying around heavy bookbags.
The MSJ leader said there are simple things that could be done with the resources to assist with the burden faced by ordinary citizens.
“That would relieve tens of thousands of parents who are struggling, some have not bought the books for school tomorrow. I know that for a fact many parents have not been able to buy the books, they may have bought one of two, certainly not all. There are many parents who have not bought a single book for their child for school tomorrow because they are unemployed or they have suffered coming out of COVID, haven’t caught themselves and so on, because food prices have been skyrocketing every day they have not been able to make ends meet.”
Abdulah said a proper transportation system for all school children in the country needs to be put in place.
Also responding to the Finance Minister’s statements that suggest another increase in fuel price is on the way. Abdulah said this will place another burden on the backs of ordinary citizens.
He said come September 2 when the budget is presented, he hopes to hear about the implementation of taxes,
“on those who have made super profits in the time of pandemic and in these times of Russia and Ukraine war.”