Dear Editor,
These are my New Year’s wishes for my beloved country.
My first wish is: I would like to see the government put back in place larger buses starting on the East Coast, West Coast of Demerara and Georgetown, later moving to the Essequibo and Corentyne coasts, as the government needs to take back control of the country’s transportation service in order to save lives and bring back some kind of sanity to the use of our roads. Senior citizens should be given free passes on the buses.
Second wish: Our secondary schools are out of control. I would like to see the Ministry of Education adopt firm rules or policies for dealing with disobedient students who blatantly refuse to comply with the rules of the school – students who are defiant to teachers in and out of the classroom. There are teachers too who are setting bad examples and are not being disciplined by the ministry when advised of their misbehaviour.
I wish to see better salaries paid to teachers in order to encourage more males and hadmasters back in the schools.
My third wish is to see the Camp Street prison population brought down to five hundred prisoners, and that officers’ salaries be made more attractive in order to bring back more male officers and reduce the female staff in a male prison. Prisoners had their motherly love and tender care up to the age of eighteen years. Now that they are over eighteen and are in prison, fathers have to take over in the prison in order to bring back discipline and total control. The same disobedient, indisciplined and disrespectful children leave school, enter the job market with the same attitude to supervisors and managers, are dismissed from their jobs and complain that nobody likes them. They are aggressive, violent and end up in trouble with the law. We do not sow limes and reap apples.
If we sow limes we are going to reap limes. A $40,000,000 two-story block in that institution will not solve the problem. There is no space in that compound for an additional building without creating more problems there. To demolish one of the present buildings to do that will create bigger problems. Bad advice Mr Minister. It will be money badly spent.
My fourth wish is that all the homeless children be picked up off the streets before they become the next generation of criminals, and put in a training facility until they become useful law-abiding citizens.
My fifth wish is for the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) to provide more patrol boats for our large coastal area. This is needed now more than ever as piracy has taken over our waterways and pirates are killing our fishermen. They may move to bigger projects if they are not stopped.
My sixth wish is for the GDF and police to be better paid in order that their numbers could be brought back to full strength. As they are now they are stretched too thin and as a result unable to function efficiently.
My seventh wish is that Guyana finds oil in commercial quantities when the drilling starts next year in order that we may be able to compete with other nations, improve our economy and fulfil all my wishes mentioned above.
The cost of living is too high in this country.
My prayers are with the public servants, nurses, teachers, firemen and all others. Guyanese please join with me and pray that all my wishes come true in 2008.
A happy, successful and prosperous New Year.
Yours faithfully,
(Name and address
provided)
