In 2005, the office of Prime Minister spent a staggering $1,203,712 on hosting and entertainment. Also, a whopping $603,558 was spent on travel and subsistence. So almost $2 million was spent by the office of the Prime Minister while the poor struggle to feed themselves. The SVG Green Party is saying that this is betrayal of the first order and loose spending of taxpayers’ money. While the ULP regime is having a good time, poor people are struggling. The hypocritical ULP regime claims to represent the poor but their millionaire lifestyle is a kick in the face.

In 2006, the ULP regime paid a law firm with close political ties to the ULP regime, approximately $105,000 to defend a claim of $50,000. The High Court did not award costs, so in this effort to exclude SVG Green Party from the political process, the ULP regime spent $105,000 to stop the SVG Green Party getting the $50,000 that political parties get to take part in the remuneration process. The ULP regime wasted taxpayers’ money to play party politics.

Analysis by SVG Green Party of the capital expenditure for the 2006 Budget estimates, revealed that capital expenditure overshot by EC$ 63,690,649.91. The SVG Constitution does not allow for an overshoot of capital expenditure of such a huge sum. SVG Green Party’s analysis shows that most of the capital expenditure overshoot could and should have been avoided. It seems that poor ULP regime economic management caused this overshoot.

In the 2007 Budget Estimates, pre-schools were granted a mere $300,000 (see page 589). However, the office of Prime Minister was granted an upmarket lifestyle of:

• $415,000 travel allowances;
• $550,000 hosting and entertainment allowances;
• $15,600 Prime Ministers entertainment allowances;
• $923,000 sundry expenses allowances;
• $82,000 other allowances;

• a grand total of $1.985 million dollars.

About 1 million dollars of the allowances is unknown – sundry and other. No concerned citizen can really stand-by while this blatant poor-rich inequality continues.

The ULP regime tries to cut corners by reducing teachers’ pay, and charging parents for their children schools books and registration, but at the same time the ULP regime is happy to squander millions on travel and entertaining. The ULP regime tries to compensate for their incompetence by taxing the people of SVG with ridiculous taxes such as VAT and the Grenadines wharf tax.

Greed has become the ULP regime’s staple diet. The ULP pulled the NDP regime out of office because of the NDP regime’s greedy Pension Bill, but the ULP regime is behaving worse than the NDP. A former ULP government minister with a big pension, is getting over $100,000 as a consultant to the government and he also sits on 4 Boards of Directors. Yet, still there are no women on statutory Boards – this is outrageous and disempowers women!

SVG Green Party believes that to reduce crime, create an effective education system and improve the financial income of the poor and unemployed, a government needs to be prudent with taxpayers’ money. A strong economy can only be created by intelligent management of taxpayers’ money.