MSJ ON BUDGET

The Movement for Social Justice says citizens are owed more information on the three preferred bidders for the Petrotrin Refinery.

Transcript

00:00The movement for social justice shares its thoughts over the five-hour-long budget delivered

00:06by Finance Minister Kom Imbert on Monday.

00:09So there was nothing transformational, there was nothing that would redirect the resources

00:17of a country by way of budget measures and so on, government fiscal measures and policies.

00:24As for the Finance Minister going through pains to explain its staving off IMF measures,

00:31his actions may not necessarily reap different results, according to MSJ leader David Abdullah.

00:38He and his government, in fact, are organizing the country in a particular way so that there's

00:45a small minority of very few people who are doing obscenely well, their lives are fantastically

00:52good.

00:53Then you have another group who are doing well, very well, they're comfortable, you

00:58know, they have savings, they could go on holiday every year, they have a credit card,

01:02they could spend money here and everywhere, and so on and so on, they have a nice house

01:07and all of that.

01:09So they're comfortable, there's a section like that.

01:12Then a very large number of people, the majority of people, are struggling to survive from

01:19payday to payday.

01:20Additionally, some 15 to 20 percent of the population live below the poverty line.

01:26And what about the $2 increase to some public sector minimum wages?

01:32When we ask the question, are people's lives going to be better, what the budget would

01:37have done is to chinks, as they used to like to use that word, to chinks, in other words,

01:45they would do one or two little things to make people believe that their lives are better

01:51when fundamentally the circumstances of people will not change in any significant way.

01:58And the country, Mr Abdullah says, is owed an explanation.

02:02When patriotic was identified by the minister in a statement to parliament as the preferred

02:08bidder in the first process of bidding way back in 2019, he identified precisely what

02:18patriotic's bid was, what were some of the other bids and so on, and why.

02:22So there was a certain amount of transparency in that regard.

02:25We heard nothing transparent yesterday.

02:28Who are these companies?

02:29We don't know.

02:30The company from Ghana, was it because the prime minister went to Ghana and spoke to

02:33somebody there and all of a sudden they put in a bid last minute?

02:37These are fundamental questions over critical state assets.

02:42Ravishi Tiwari, Rupnirain, TV6 News.