The Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Guyana (FITUG) could not ignore that the Guyanese people will see from October 01 another burden placed on their overburden backs as the Guyana Water Inc (GWI) prepares to impose another round of water rate hikes. The newest increase has seen the cost of water, in the Land of Many Waters, rising significantly.
The Federation has calculated that unmetered customers will see their monthly rates going up by approximately 200 per cent as they apart from the increased charges will also have to pay 14 per cent as VAT. For the ordinary workers and their families, it’s a cost they can ill-afford but a service that cannot do without either. Indeed the huge increase in the cost of water pales in comparison to the Coalition exuberant utterances about pay rises it imposed for public sector workers. Of course, as the FITUG knows all too well, the workers of the sugar sector have not even benefitted from any pay rise since the Coalition took office.
The imposition of higher water rates also cannot be disconnected from the multitude of hikes in the cost of Government services; the expansion of the range of goods and services that attract VAT, and the withdrawal of useful and helpful public support to our working-people. Indeed, through direct and indirect means, our working-people are required to meet these new impositions. The boastful explanations, we have seen, in recent and previous times about higher tax revenues is a sordid indicator of how much more has been extracted from the Guyanese people.
Indeed the cost-of-living has risen tremendously. Data emanating from the most recently available Bureau of Statistics – Statistical Bulletin indicates that between March, 2016 and September, 2018 that the cost of white rice has risen by 30%, flour went up by 29%, sugar was up by 27%, cooking gas rose by 24% and salt increase by 83%. Indeed the meager improvements workers were given have been eaten away. At the same time, the Bureau’s Guyana Labour Force Survey Report 2018, released in June, this year, indicates that unemployment rate rose from 12.2 per cent at the end of 2017 to 13.8 per cent at the end of 2018. In the same period, youth unemployment rose from 22.9 per cent to 25.6 per cent. The report also disclosed that earnings of workers also declined during the period.
Indeed, when taken together the situation for the Guyanese working-class does not appear to be rosy. Workers and their families are facing undoubtedly real challenges in making ends meet and times, it seems, are getting tougher.
