Opposition Leader Jamal Pringle says while residents survived 2023, the new year is being greeted with great anxiety by most of the citizens and residents of Antigua and Barbuda.

Pringle looked back at the challenges faced during his New Year address today, specifically mentioning high

inflation, high crime, high unemployment among the youth, and high levels of mental illness, physical sickness, and death.

He said residents are also rolling into the new year with unresolved

low points of the past year, including the huge failure of Antigua Airways and the blatant deceptions of the Brown administration.

“The loss of more than a dozen Cameroonians at sea. The abandonment of the survivors in Saint Kitts, the critical shortage of potable water. The neglect of the health facilities including the hospital, the gradual crumbling of our infrastructure, the disappointment of the minimum wage increase, and the mistreatment of the former late 1974 workers. The list is long, but the pictures are still fresh in your mind,” Pringle said

Pringle said this new year will bring even greater financial challenges, as the steep hike in several taxes will mean increased prices in the supermarket.

“At the bar, the hardware store, the hairdresser, the doctor. When we travel in shock. Everywhere. And while the Brown administration tells us that this is the cost of funding salary increases for public servants, we are hearing nothing on how it intends to cushion the impact of these taxes on our purses and wallets.”

Pringle said both the throne speech and the budget presentation were recycled, and measures were not mentioned to ease the squeeze this government has created.

“Only recycled promises that hardly ever materialized. And when they do, it is never to the benefit of the working class or the poor, or the pensioners,” he said

Referring to the latest ECLAC predictions of economic growth, Pringle said these figures are pie-in-the-sky promises residents have heard for the last decade.

“We have only seen the middle class shrinking and the ranks of the working poor swelling”, he said

Adding, “accordingly, 2024 must be the year in which we take back our land, redeem our country and ensure that no worker, no child, no senior, no community and no constituency lives in despair”.

Furthermore, Pringle said the United Progressive Party offers a better and fairer alternative to what passes No for governance, pledging to spare no effort to bring relief, release, and restoration to this country and its people.

“We did it before, and we can do it again. We have suffered too much. We have lost too much already. We owe it to ourselves and to our children and their children to pull Antigua and Barbuda back from the moral and financial bankruptcy that now faces us. And once we stand together for what is good and what is right, we can get it done”.