PROCEEDINGS AND DEBATES OF THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OF THE FIRST SESSION (2006-2011) OF THE NINTH PARLIAMENT OF GUYANA UNDER THE CONSTITUTION OF THE CO-OPERATIVE REPUBLIC OF GUYANA HELD IN THE PARLIAMENT CHAMBER, PUBLIC BUILDINGS, BRICKDAM, GEORGETOWN TH Friday, 28TH January, 2011 145 Sitting The Assembly convened at 2.20 p.m. Prayers [Mr. Speaker in the Chair] ANNOUNCEMENTS BY THE SPEAKER Welcome Mr. Speaker: Hon. Members, I would like to take this opportunity to welcome twenty students and two teachers from the Camille‟s Academy, at Soesdyke, East Bank Demerara. I trust that Members of the National Assembly will demonstrate to the students how national debates are conducted. PUBLIC BUSINESS GOVERNMENT BUSINESS MOTION BUDGET SPEECH 2011 – MOTION FOR THE APPROVAL OF THE ESTIMATES OF EXPENDITURE FOR 2011 1 WHEREAS the Constitution of Guyana requires that Estimates of the Revenue and Expenditures of Guyana for any financial year should be laid before the National Assembly; AND WHEREAS the Constitution also provides that when the Estimates of Expenditure have been approved by the Assembly an Appropriation Bill shall be introduced in the Assembly providing for the issue from the Consolidated Fund of the sums necessary to meet that expenditure. AND WHEREAS Estimates of Revenue and Expenditure of Guyana for the financial year 2011 have been prepared and laid before the Assembly on 2011-01-17 NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED: That this National Assembly approves the Estimates of Expenditure for the financial year 2011, of a total sum of one hundred and forty-six billion, eight hundred and seventy-nine million, six hundred and fifty-four thousand dollars ($146,879,654,000), excluding fourteen billion, five hundred and fifty million, five hundred and two thousand dollars ($14,550,502,000) which is chargeable by law, as detailed therein and summarised in the undermentioned schedule, and agree that it is expedient to amend the law and to make further provision in respect of finance. [Minister of Finance] Assembly resumed budget debate Dr. Norton: I rise to make my contribution in this Hon. House to the budget debate of 2011, as presented by the Hon. Member Dr. Ashni Singh, Minister of Finance, entitled, Together Building Tomorrow’s Guyana Today. Before I go further, as the world observes the International Year for People of African Descent let me recognise and pay homage, and also that congratulations are in order for the Hon. Member, Ms. Joan Baveghems, who has been recently sworn in as a Member of this Hon. House. I would now like to make my contributions to the debate. The Hon. Minister of Finance was quite impressive with the language used in the budget, where he spoke about some unmistakable lessons to be learnt from past experiences, and I quote: 2 “No less is required, if we are to reduce our susceptibility to external shocks, reduce poverty to a minimum, and unleash the creative energies and productive efforts of all of our people to their maximum potential.” I cannot agree more with the Minister. But let us see if this budget will help in this regard. According to this budget, in 2011, $14 billion has been allocated to the health sector, with the aim of improving the quality of services provided by continuing the efforts to improve infrastructure, human resources, and the delivery of the publicly guaranteed health services packages. In spite of the fact that there has been increasing investment over the years, and substantially so, there are pertinent, real and genuine concerns by Guyanese, relating to whether we are getting reciprocal returns for the investment of the people‟s money in this sector. In other words, are we getting value for money? There is no doubt that there have been some improvements, and we have made some strides in the past, in the health sector. Not surprisingly, of course, with all that spending of large sums of money in this sector there must be, has to be, some improvements - something to point out. There might have been some achievement in immunization- no doubt about that. This is especially so with the introduction of the two new vaccines: that of the Rotavirus and the Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine 13. We hope that the $400 million of this budget which will be going to the vaccination programme will be sufficient to make the planned introduction of the Human Papilloma Virus vaccine for young girls to become a reality. There is, however, room for improvement in the vaccination programme, especially in the Hinterland communities, as was pointed out by the Hon. Member, Mrs. Hastings, from the Upper Mazaruni area, with respect to refrigeration of the vaccines preventing them from being spoilt. There might be some improvements in the management of chronic diseases, like diabetes and hypertension. We do hope that the Ministry of Health got all the money that was asked for, or that the $500 million it received will be enough for the projections of those two diseases. This would avoid that which has become a norm or a habit- coming to this National Assembly to pass supplementary allocations, after the fact, as happened last year, one day before the end of the year. According to the Minister this was to purchase medications for these two chronic diseases. Unfortunately, the Minister of Health did not inform this House what happened to the 3 programme for the management of diabetic eye disease which he boasted about in last year‟s budget. Let us hope that we will be able to see some progress in this regard during this year. There might have been some improvements in the increase of the number of health care workers in all of the country. Of course, over $280 million was expended last year on training. We hope that the $345 million, that is now injected, will be sufficient to take our human resource capacity to where it is supposed to be. We call once again on the Government to pay heed to our plea made during the debate of last year, and to the recommendations of the various investigations which were carried out. That plea is for the correction of the non-availability of specialist care in the four areas of basic eye care delivery at the Guyana Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) and the other regional hospitals. We are referring to that of obstetrics and gynaecology, paediatrics, surgery and internal medicine. There is a dire need for postgraduate training in the different specialist areas of medicine, and it must be done in sufficient numbers to cover the entire country. This is so, especially in the areas of neurosurgery, urology, paediatric surgery and pathology. As was the case of ophthalmology, there is one qualified Guyanese Government Pathologist for over two decades now at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation. I must tell this Hon. House that we now have a trained Guyanese ophthalmologist, who returned home from a scholarship with a contractual obligation to the Government, working at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation, thanks to an organisation called Orbis International. Another will be back shortly from Uruguay, again thanks to another organisation called Sight Savors International. What is a bit strange is that there are scholarships for postgraduate training in ophthalmology being advertised in our local newspapers with the qualifying exams being written in Spanish. I would assume that this is totally out of the control of the Health Ministry, for that certainly was not meant for the Guyanese medical graduates as those from the University of Guyana (UG), for they are not known to be versed in Spanish or to even speak the language. There seems to be a lack of communication somewhere, and efforts must be made by the Ministry to correct same or else our local graduates can cry foul and they would be justified in doing so. This postgraduate 4 training should have happened two decades ago and should have happened in so many other areas of medicine. While it seems as though we shall be improving the ophthalmic human resources of this country I would like to point out that there are still so many setbacks. The Hon. Minister boasted about the realisation of cataracts by the phacoemulsification procedure. This, however, happens to be a thing of the past. This is so because the hospital managed to acquire the equipment and consumables necessary with the compliments of the influences of a particular Chinese ophthalmologist who worked at the GPHC at that time. I say this because since that particular Chinese doctor left Guyana we seem unable to have access to the consumables necessary for the realisation of this procedure and the hospital refuses to access same, so that we can no longer do phacoemulsification. Besides, the wet field bipolar cautery that is so necessary for ophthalmic surgery has not been functioning for the past months and the administration of the hospital cannot say when there will be a replacement. While we congratulate the GPHC for the three postgraduate programmes in place, namely surgery, orthopaedics and anaesthesia, as mentioned in the budget, along with the new nurses psychiatric programme that was stated in the budget, to be introduced, it is important to know that most of the major players and instructors of these programmes have been qualified under the PNC Government, having enjoyed the Government‟s postgraduate scholarships. They did not have to wait on international organisations for those awards. Just to let you know that the postgraduate training in anaesthesia no longer does exists, because the three students who were in the programme have now abandoned it. There is that feeling that Dr. Sugrim, the returnee ophthalmologist, will remain and work in Guyana and will not leave as so many other co-health workers before him, especially the nurses, continue to do.