The present Government is hard pressed to find money to pay for Subsidies for the School Certificate and the Higher School Certificate examinations. So, we have come up with an idea on that too… We heard of billion rupee profits for banks and hotel groups.

We do remember a previous episode when Rajesh Jeetah came on TV and told us the elimination of subsidies on Ration rice was justified. He also gave the example of tourists gorging themselves on our precious subsidized ration rice in the hotels around the island.

Well, to put matters into perspective, now that the price of flour, bread and other items such as Cooking gas have gone through the roof, Government has had to help out by restoring some subsidies on flour, bread and cooking gas (LPG).

That is one of the reasons why they cannot raise the subsidy ceiling for the SC and HSC exams. Some 60 million rupees would be needed.

• Well, why does our dear Rajesh Jeetah not take the courageous decision to ask the hotels to buy their flour in bulk at the full non-subsidised rate of some 23 rupees per kilo or more?
• Why not ask the hotels and Industry to pay for the sugar they use at full industrial (non subsidy) price as recently suggested by dear Arvind?
• Why not pass regulations that the hotels and industry buy their LPG in bulk (plus VAT) at industrial non-subsidised rates too?
• It would also be nice to tell Bakeries that they too could sell their bread and other produce at market rates to the Hotels and charge VAT on it too. This full rate would then subsidise the cost of bread for the people and eliminate the need for bakeries to buy flour at subsidised rates!
• The same would then apply to those businesses involved in dholl-puri and similar cooking on an industrial scale.

The resulting savings on subsidies and the additional VAT income could well cover the cost of the subsidies on exam fees, which open doors for our children to a new economy. I do hope the Ministers concerned try to apply this commonsense approach to targeting those enterprises which can pay.

The money saved will then be used to further the development of our most precious resource, knowledge workers in Mauritius.