As Finance Minister Colm Imbert presented the 2017/2018 $50.5 billion budget on Monday, a single parent sat in her Debe home cringing at every tax and increase announced.
The reality of what impact the budget will have on her quality of life has not yet taken effect, but Donna Ramcharan admits she is scared.
“I am scared because things so hard already. What am I going to do because things will go up? Once fuel prices go up, groceries, transport all those things will go up,” Ramcharan, 45, said at her Pundit Trace home yesterday.
She is a mother of five, three adults and two minors aged 15 and six. Four of her children, her son in law and four-year-old granddaughter live with her.
Due to an injury to her back, a curved spin coupled with arthritis, she only works on a Sunday frying doubles, aloe pies and other delicacies at a Debe food hut for $150. With only one other person employed in the house, she feels the brunt of having to provide for her family, pay the utility bills and send her children to school.
Unable to buy monthly or weekly groceries with her small wages, Ramcharan only buys basic necessities when they run out.
“I don’t buy one place. I go different groceries where there are different prices. I buy where I get the cheapest prices. I just buy the basics because things so expensive and how I not really working. Anything I see on special I will buy that and I will use it out depending on the expiry date.”
She said she has not yet bought all the school books for her teenage son and it costs $10 a day in travelling to send him to school.
“The other day a driver took $7 from my son. I told him don’t pay that because it is $5, but now the taxis already say they going to raise the fare because fuel gone up and the taxes they will now have to pay.”
Luckily, her daughter’s school is nearby so she walks there.
Recalling that she did not receive a WASA bill in a few months, Ramcharan said when they did send a bill it was for $1,150.
“I went to them and ask if I could pay on terms. I still owing them though. They will cut me if I don’t pay it,” she said.
“I really feeling frustrated. I feel the Finance Minister could have done better than that. He should have study the people as things already raise so much.”
Ramcharan said most days she is left with barely any extra money.
“My son in law and son not working right now because things slow in the construction. My big boy got eight subjects and did electrical engineering but he can’t get a job. Right now he is working at a club on Saturdays and Sundays,” she lamented.
The single mother said for more than five years, “little by little” she has been trying to refurbish her home.
“Recently, when Hurricane Bret pass we get flooded out. We lost a lot of things, beds, fan, TV, microwave and clothes stuff. We got no compensation,” said Ramcharan.
She applied for social welfare but was rejected because she works on a Sunday.
“I don’t think that is fair, but someone told me to reapply. I will try because it is not that I am not willing to work I just can’t because of my back,” she said.