Editorial

Dr Bertrand Ramcharan is not one to shy away from controversy. 

Imagine a Martian landing in Guyana tomorrow and taking in their first view of the country.

On November 16th, in Cummings Park, ‘E’ Field Sophia, an 11-month-old baby girl, Melveena Angel Blair, was burnt to death in her family’s home.

Twenty-five years ago, a cellular phone was a clunky device that could not fit into a regular pocket or small purse; it did not have a camera or much of a screen.

As one examines the ever evolving culture of Guyanese society, the shortchanging of a well-rounded high school experience for students of the last two decades, unfortunately, glows brightly in the spotlight.

The sense one gets from President Irfaan Ali’s recent 5:30 am meeting with Ministers and some senior Public Servants is that he seeking to send a message that there are mechanisms within aspects of the government’s machinery that are, at the least, creaking at the hinges, and that he is seeking to send a boisterous message to those state functionaries of his unhappiness with the performances of some key institutions of government and that he is seeking significant changes in the modus operandi of those aspects of the operational side of the governance process.

On November 15th, the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) charged two former employees of the Ministry of Health’s Materials Management Unit (MMU) Bond at Diamond, East Bank Demerara with money laundering.

Wrapped in the package of this year’s Christ-mas policing plan came the annual crime figures.

Every person has in their mind, an idea of the person they are.

Stripped of the theatre and vaudeville, Tuesday’s 5.30 am meeting summoned by President Ali at State House underlined the serious problems facing state projects, something the public has been well aware of for years.

Last week, November 7 and 8, Bogota, Colombia hosted the first ever Global Ministerial Conference on Ending Violence Against Children, an initiative of the governments of Colombia and Sweden in partnership with the United Nations Special Representative of the Secretary General on ending violence against children.

One of the enduring problems one encounters in the daily exercise of surviving in our society is figuring out the ever fluctuating blurred lines.

The October 25 issue of the Stabroek News published a letter written by the Guyana Trades Union Congress’ (GTUC) General Secretary, Lincoln Lewis, following his meeting with the labour movement, the substance of which had to do with the idea of utilizing a section of the Critchlow Labour College’s campus to provide a limited market facility for a  number of vendors and would-be vendors whose trading pursuits were being affected by the encumbering nature of street vending.

All over the city, surveillance cameras are being installed atop poles.

There is no shortage of speculation about what Mr Trump’s second stint as president might entail for this or that region of the world.

Homelessness is a pervasive issue that affects cities globally, with varying approaches to managing it.

With the price for gold on the international market around US$2,668 per ounce, the attraction for licit and illicit mining in the interior remains high and accompanied by all of the usual depredations: deforestation, reckless use of mercury and the pollution of rivers among others. 

Earlier this week, the Department of Public Information (DPI) informed us that the lack of progress on the construction of the state-of-the-art maternal and paediatric hospital on the lower East Coast Demerara and the news that it was unlikely to be completed before the last quarter of next year had vexed President Irfaan Ali.

On Sunday, the University of Guyana (UG), in keeping with its tradition of conferring honorary degrees on outstanding individuals, announced the names of recipients of honorary doctorates for this year’s convocation exercises.

To state that the image of the Guyana Police Force has descended to worrisome depths – which we may not have thought conceivable even a few years ago – is to indulge in considerable understatement.