The Peoples Progressive Party Civic (PPP/C) administration is looking to conduct a household income and expenditure survey, according to the party’s General Secretary and the country’s Vice President Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo.
During his weekly press conference on Thursday, Dr. Jagdeo said: “we need to do a household income and expenditure survey…we’ll have to do it” to provide updated data on poverty and inequality.
However, he expressed confidence that the survey findings would show “tonnes of people more are working and earning…”
Jagdeo made the remarks in response to questions about the government’s intention to create a policy or law to guide the importation of foreign labour.
The Vice President explained that the PPP/C has plans to create thousands of additional jobs in existing and emerging sectors of the economy during its next term.
In fact, he pointed out that since assuming office in 2020, a major focus of the party has always been on creating employment opportunities for citizens. Initially, he said, emphasis was placed on employing workers laid off during the APNU+AFC’s term in office as well as those who lost their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Additionally, Jagdeo said there were still some regions without sufficient employment opportunities, prompting the government to increase spending on roads, bridges, housing schemes, and other initiatives to provide employment.
“It’s not perfect now, but at least more people are working,” he said, pointing that the part-time job initiative has also boosted the employment opportunities for citizens.
Jagdeo also noted that the government has reduced taxes on income earned by citizens who decide to take up a second job.
But even with these initiatives, there are still labour shortages in certain sectors as the country’s economy continues to rapidly grow.
As such, he noted that the government has permitted some companies to import labour for big projects, including the Demerara River Bridge. However, these instances were done in limited amounts and in an ad hoc manner.
The migration policy will allow for this process to be more formalised. It will be tabled in the National Assembly for debate to garner the inputs of opposition members and address the issue of migrants already in Guyana. The migrants will be identified with the soon-to-be-implemented electronic identification cards.
“So we are starting off, first of all, by knowing who is here…How many of us Guyanese are here…and how many non-Guyanese are in our country…So we know how many Venezuelans are here, how many Chinese are here, Indians, wherever you’re from, and they would have a separate card,” the VP explained.
“We will then be able to agree to a migration policy that allows people to come and work here, and be treated decently but have some differentiation between the benefits to Guyanese and those who are coming here,” he further stated.
Jagdeo emphasised that “we want, first of all, to take care of our people”, after which, the labour policy will address the movement of people across borders.
For instance, he said “we want to get more women in the labour force.” Jagdeo said the goal is to bring about 100,000 women into the workforce.
Meanwhile, Jagdeo said the policy, once completed, will consider the demands of the oil, agriculture and other expanding sectors to determine the manpower requirements of the country.
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