Dear Editor,
I wish to lodge with you my consternation regarding the cartoon in your edition of Thursday, January 27.
I am aware that cartoons are attempts at satire, but I am equally aware, as I am sure you are, that they also serve as commentary and help to shape opinion.
Mrs Sheila Holder, Member of the National Assembly, claims that the number on the pension list is severely inflated. She presents a study that was informed by answers I had given in the National Assembly, a value for money audit report and the 2002 census. Mrs Holder confessed that this is how the study was done by she herself.
Relying on the study she says that there can be no more than 26, 340 pensioners, hence her conclusion that the pension register is inflated. She says 17,640 persons must be phantom pensioners.
A Populations Projections report on Guyana that was done by a United Nations demographer named Sonkarley T Beaie, MPhil, projected that in 2010 the pension population is likely to be 43,539.
This study was done in November 2006 and can be found at www.statisticsguyana.gov.gy
About 42,000 persons are currently receiving old age pensions.
I know your newspaper is aware of this matter in its entirety as in all other pieces published on this issue, your newspaper has reported comprehensively and fairly.
I am sure that given the above you will appreciate my puzzlement and disquiet at your cartoon carried in Thursday’s paper.
Yours faithfully,
Priya Manickchand
Minister of Human Services
and Social Security
Editor’s note
There is a distinction between reportage and opinion pieces, and cartoons fall in the latter category. What our reports do is attempt to cover a dispute like the number of actual pensioners on the roll as fairly and even-handedly as possible, while our opinions on the same subject would be contained in our leader columns. To date, however, we have not taken up any editorial stance on that particular issue.
Having said that, we should emphasise that this is not a monolithic newspaper, and we do not dictate to our cartoonist and our columnists what position they should adopt on any question of the day. They are free to express their views, which may or may not be in consonance with ours.