Poverty level must be addressed -Garnett By Miranda La Rose Stabroek News November 25, 2000 A Guyana Trades Union Congress (GTUC) executive member is urging the government and the Private Sector Commission to hold a retreat involving all social partners, to establish and institutionalise a national platform of action to help in the eradication of poverty. Speaking at the opening of the Third Triennial Congress of the Guyana Bauxite and General Workers' Union (GB&GWU) at the Watooka Club in Linden on Thursday, the GTUC Principal Assistant Secretary and President of the Guyana Local Government Officers' Union, Andrew Garnett, blamed the level of poverty in the country over the past 18 years on bad governance. This, he added, was due to poor economic policies, inadequate support of the private sector, inadequate infrastructure and deteriorating social services, the absence of institutional and continuous dialogue with workers and their trade unions. He said that because of the levels of poverty highlighted in the `1999 Living Conditions Survey' it was imperative that political parties and civil society subordinate partisan and sectarian interest and create an agenda "which will put Guyana first". The survey, which was published in the country's interim Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper 2000, showed a decrease of eight per cent in absolute poverty levels and a ten per cent decline in extreme poverty levels over a seven-year period. It also showed that 35 per cent of the population lived below the poverty line with 19 per cent living under conditions of extreme poverty. According to the survey, Garnett said, most of the poor in the country lived in rural areas and were largely self-employed in subsistence agriculture or worked as manual labourers. In the urban areas the incidence of poverty was highest among the unemployed, those working as maids and in the construction sector; poverty was also unevenly distributed with fewer than one in every six persons being considered poor in the city. The highest incidence of poverty was in the hinterland resulting largely from isolation. Poverty was also gauged along ethnic lines with the highest incidence of poverty among the Amerindians, followed by Indo-Guyanese and then Afro-Guyanese. Because the trades union movement represented over 80,000 workers in the country, any recovery process should not be implemented without the active participation of the workers and their unions. Noting that last year government and the private sector held a joint retreat to look at the economic prospects of the country, Garnett said that such a retreat was inherently deficient and called on government "to take a bold and imaginative step and include the labour movement in a proposed retreat" to establish and institutionalise a national platform of action. Towards achieving this objective, Garnett said, the GTUC had submitted to government and the PSC, a draft statement of intent as a prerequisite for the formulation of a social contract which could be used by the social partners as an instrument for collective and responsible action. According to the statement of intent, the challenges facing the country at this time required that the social partners act in a collective and responsible manner to develop and achieve economic growth; improve living standards; strengthen public institutions and services; achieve social solidarity; reduce unemployment; stem migration; create a good investment and business climate; maintain a stable exchange rate among other objectives. The GTUC, he said, was committed to the development of social partnerships as poverty and social exclusion were still a stark reality for many. Noting that the statement of intent was tabled at a recent tri-partite committee meeting chaired by Minister of Labour, Dr Henry Jeffrey, Garnett said that the ball was now in the government's court. Garnett challenged the GB&GWU to become more involved in the plans and developmental programmes of mining communities. He noted that because of prevailing economic conditions in the country, the executive council of the GTUC had designed a programme to improve the lot of its members. This included the design and development of a trade union low-cost land settlement scheme for 1,000 family units; establish a technical and vocational training programme to assist unemployed and underemployed youth; restructure the Critchlow Labour College (CLC) with a view to improving its education and training activities; introduce an affiliate programme--the Associate of Social Sciences degree in Industrial Relations to be offered by the CLC in collaboration with the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Guyana (UG). He noted that former UG vice-chancellor, Professor Harold Lutchman, was currently advising on the CLC's improvement programme. Funding for the new projects were being pursued, he said. And giving an update on its discussions pertinent to the National Insurance Scheme, Garnett said that the GTUC was dissatisfied with its investment policy and was urging its reform to include mortgage financing for housing. The GTUC was also requesting that the minimum NIS pension be adjusted to the equivalent of the public service minimum wage. Follow the goings-on in Guyana in Guyana Today