Turning back to the budget debate, it began this morning with a speech from one of the members of the Opposition - newcomer representative Godwin Haylock.
Haylock - who is an attorney - focused on several sectors, including the teachers' salary raise and the state of the public transportation system. He called out the budget for not allocating the proper funds for both.
Godwin Haylock, Area Rep., Queen Square
"While the education budget includes some commendable areas, there is one area that I wish to highlight. For its drastic budget increase at page 157 of the draft estimates, the total budget ceiling for this ministry stands at a whopping $303 million, illustrating a near $14 million increase. However, the real increase is found under a personal emoluments of the budget estimate. The personal emoluments stand at $208 million for salaries, allowances, wages and overtime. That's $83 million more than last year's budget, which is an increase of 66%. Come on, Mr. Minister of Education. It shows that this government can't find money for what they want to. I hope and I pray that this $83 million includes funds for teacher salary raise and for the teachers increments. UDP government raised teacher's salaries more than 20% between 2014 and 2020. Fact check that. So any suggestion by this PIP government that nothing happened for the past 13 years of the UDP government is not only dishonest. It disrespects the very unions and public servants they now claim to represent. The transport budget is expected to increase from $6.1 million to $7.8 million. That's an increase of $1.7 million of which 1.5 million is an increase earmarked for spending on recurrent revenues, believe it or not, recurrent revenues. So a clear majority goes to just recurrent revenues. This is the fifth national budget presented by the member from Orange Walk Central. And you know what? It contains not even a shilling of hope that this government cares about communities. And not even a Queen's dollar coin is found in the draft estimates to build or upgrade infrastructures like bus terminals. At this stage, nothing is in place to convince bus operators to take this leap of faith into another monopoly. The government has no credibility in this industry. They have invested nothing meaningful in this year's draft estimate. As such, bus operators will find it hard to believe what they were promised from this prematurely hatched proposal."
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