Baksh wants pension for all

UNC Senator Sadiq Baksh urged the Government to introduce a universal pension scheme available to all persons over the age of 65 years. He was addressing the Budget debate in the Senate on Tuesday night. While persons who had not worked were entitled to get the national old age pension, Baksh lamented that other persons who had worked hard and paid taxes were not eligible. “Many persons give away what little they had to try to qualify for old age pension, but then lose that and are left out in the rain.” He also urged the Government to create a national pension plan for working persons. “Every citizen can contribute and there will be compulsory employer contributions.” Many models already existed for this he said, singling out the Canada Pension Plan. Baksh hit the Government for needing 26 of its different sectors to monitor all of its social welfare programmes.

Accusing the Government of over-consuming without any proper plan for tomorrow, he hit: “They want to go to El Tucuche but are taking a taxi to ‘douendom’.” He hit the Government for hiking the price of gasoline in the last Budget, which in turn had hiked food prices which he lamented had now “run away.” Contrasting the gasoline hike to this Budget’s removal of tax on items like mauby, Baksh said: “Everyone has put up their prices, even the doubles vendor and the mauby vendor.” The Budget, he said, failed to help those he called the working poor. He slammed, “The solution is not a hamper, a CEPEP, a ten-days, or a soup  kitchen.” Baksh concluded, “I warn that failing to address social needs will be the tinder that ignites the unstoppable social revolution.”