Pickstock Area Rep Says There Was Christmas Cheer This Year

Wilfred Elrington

In recent years the Government’s Christmas Cheer program has become a staple of the season – as welcome in some political quarters as ham and turkey. How it’s worked in the past is that U.D.P. area representatives receive double what their counterparts from the Opposition receive. U.D.P. caretakers receive the same amount as P.U.P. Area Representatives. For the first time since the start of the program, nobody’s talking about Christmas Cheer. Weeks ago Prime Minister Dean Barrow explained that the cheer would not be as robust as in recent years, but it would happen. So did it? Pickstock Area Representative Wilfred Elrington told News Five today that it did. 

Wilfred Elrington, Area Rep., Pickstock

“The usual Christmas cheer has in fact been given out. Most people have gotten. It has not been enough. It has not been enough to give to everybody because it’s a poor country. We just don’t have the resources. So we have in fact been able to give out the Christmas Cheer that was made available to us. We in Pickstock…we gave Christmas cheer to maybe fifteen hundred people but you know…there are three thousand plus. But you know the resources are just not there. But the cheer has been given out. As you saw this morning I have had to be supplementing that out of my own personal resources to help the poor people who have come to me. You saw that this morning. I understand their need. I understand that this is a time when everybody wants to get something extra for the family. I am hoping and praying for the day when the economy is going to be so good that our people will be able to generate enough wealth for themselves and their families so they do not have to rely on things like Christmas Cheer from the government.”