‘Spend Cash Grant on school supplies’, counsels PM Phillips

PRIME MINISTER MARK PHILLIPS WANTS PARENTS spend the $19,000 ‘Because
We Care’ cash grant from the government on their children’s learning.
Addressing Barima/Waini (Region One) parents the former Guyana Defence Force (GDF)
soldier told them the monies “should not be spent on any other expenditure…(but) on ensuring
that your children get those extra (school) items.”

Prime Minister Phillips, a retired GDF Brigadier, emphasised expenditures on learning should be
prioritised in spending the available sums available under the $3B package recently unveiled by
the one-year-old Irfaan Ali administration.
He and a team were distributing the cash grant in Port Kaituma where some 1900 children were
expected to benefit from the collective sum of $35.4M budgeted for the interior community.
Students from the Port Kaituma Nursery, Primary and Secondary Schools, Four Miles Nursery
and the Falls Top Primary School were targeted in the distribution exercise.

Meanwhile, PM Phillips who is the head of the National COVID-19 Task Force, commend
residents of the Region One sub-district for their positive approach to the national vaccination
drive. With 67 percent of the population taking the jab, Region One has the highest rate of
inoculation.
Minister of Amerindian Affairs, Pauline Sukhai; Minister of Local Government and
Regional Development, Nigel Dharamlall and the Minister of Housing and Water, Collin
Croal visited other sub-regions in Barima/Waini during the one-day visit.