KINGSTOWN, St. Vincent, CMC—Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves has announced a three-month cost-of-living initiative intended to benefit 3,000 people.
“For the three months December 2024 to February 2025, … a special cost-of-living allowance, I’m calling it COLA Special, not Coca-Cola, just COLA Special, of $175 monthly,” Gonsalves said in his address Sunday night to mark St. Vincent and the Grenadines’ 45th anniversary of political independence from Britain.
Gonsalves, speaking at the traditional independence parade of the protective services, held at night for the first time since independence on October 27, 1979, said this will be rolled out to 3,000 means-tested, particularly vulnerable households.
“This will cost, for the three months, EC$1.575 million (One EC dollar=US$0.37 cents) or EC$525 monthly,” said Gonsalves, adding that the Ministry of National Mobilisation will execute the program.
Prime Minister Gonsalves said the government will evaluate this program after its initial rollout and consider a possible continuation into 2025.
As has been the case for over a decade, Gonsalves used the speech to make a series of “announcements,” several of which were not new.
The independence address could be the second-to-last before general elections, which are constitutionally due by February 2026 but widely expected before the end of 2025.
Political observers often use the speech to gauge when the general elections will likely be called.
Gonsalves also announced that his ruling Unity Labour Party (ULP) government would ramp up its surveillance of “those unscrupulous retailers.”
“We have some good retailers, and we have some want to gouge us — as you say on the road, ‘dig out we eye.’ We have some unscrupulous ones reportedly engaged in price gouging,” he said.
Prime Minister Gonsalves said the government would use the Consumer Protection Act and the Price and Distribution of Goods Act “to the fullest to curtail price gouging, especially in the unusual circumstances occasioned by Hurricane Beryl.”
Among the other new initiatives announced by the prime minister was the indefinite continuation of the policy that people who use less than 250 units per month will not pay any value-added tax (VAT) on their bills.
He also said the duty-free concession on cement will be extended indefinitely.
“I am resolved to make cement in this country the most affordable in the entire OECS (Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States).”
He said the EC$600 monthly income support for the unemployed, heads of households, owners of micro-enterprises, farmers, farm workers, fishers and their crew, and the workers laid off in the tourism sector as a result of Hurricane Beryl will continue until 2025.
Gonsalves also announced that 368 recipients of loans from the National Student Loan Company will receive one month’s relief in their repayment in December. He said these recipients have graduated from university and are current with loan payments.
“I want them to spend a little better Christmas in post-Beryl,” he said, referring to the category four hurricane that devastated parts of the country, mainly the Southern Grenadines, on July 1 before leaving a trail of destruction in other Caribbean countries.
“This will cost the government just over EC$200,000,” Gonsalves said, adding that the relief is additional to the reduction of the interest rate on student loans to 4.5 percent annually, as he announced last year and was implemented in Budget 2024.
In 2020, Gonsalves dismissed as “opportunistic” a policy announced by the main opposition New Democratic Party (NDP) that if elected to office, it would have halved to 4.5 percent of the interest students pay on loans from the state-owned company.
Gonsalves also announced that second-year students of the community college and all teachers at all primary and secondary schools owned or assisted by the government will receive brand-new laptops.
“We estimate that there will be about 2,500, maybe slightly more. You will get them courtesy of the government in early 2025,” he said, adding that this will cost more than three million dollars.
He further said that all 320 new applicants for the one-year Support for Education and Training (SET) program who qualified had been approved for employment from November.
Further, SET employees who are Community College graduates will receive EC$200 monthly on their existing stipend, while those who are university graduates will receive $300 more.
Gonsalves noted that the current SET employees — over 200 — have had their stints extended to December 2024.
In sports, he said the government, in conjunction with the private sector, football clubs, and the Football Federation, will spearhead the establishment of a semi-professional football league “to make sure that our young football players make some money while they are playing football.”
The prime minister announced that police officers who provided security during the T20 World Cricket Cup in June will be paid an estimated EC$500,000.
Gonsalves, who is also Minister of National Security, said earlier this month that the police had submitted a bill of EC$780,000 and asked the acting Commissioner of Police, Enville Williams, for “a realistic document.”
He said on Sunday night that the government and the Commissioner of Police had revised the payment numbers.
Gonsalves also announced that allowances for particular categories of public employees, including aggrieved police officers and junior doctors, will be reviewed for 2025.
“Some of these allowances have not been increased for a little while, and we have to put that right,” Gonsalves said, adding that the details will be provided in the national budget 2025.
He further said his government will beef up the state institutions responsible for citizen security, including the law courts, the police force, the Coast Guard, the prisons, and the National Commission on Crime Prevention. He would provide details in Budget 2025.
Gonsalves also announced that the duty-free concessions on “Christmas barrels”, which came into effect following Hurricane Beryl, will run through January 31, next year.
“So those who are late will have an extra month,” he said, adding that the government will establish a national orchestra and a national choir this year.
The prime minister also noted that on October 24, the government awarded 104 national scholarships, national exhibitions, special awards, and bursaries for university education based on the results of the 2024 Caribbean Examination Council’s (CXC) CAPE and associate degree examinations.
Additionally, this year, the state-owned National Student Loan Company granted economically disadvantaged student loans to 50 students to pursue university education.
The prime minister said the repair program for houses damaged by the April 2021 eruption of La Soufriere volcano and Hurricane Beryl would continue unabated until all the houses are repaired.
“I don’t have all the money as yet. It’s a huge task, but we are getting there. I’m gathering it bit by bit, day by day, sweet Jesus, and together, we will solve this housing problem that Beryl has created for us,” he said.
Gonsalves further said the government would restructure its sports department “to ensure optimal functioning in light of the huge expansion of top-quality sports facilities, the vastly improved performances of our sportsmen and women, and the increased rollout of educational training and job opportunities for sportsmen and sportswomen.”
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