Education Minister Priya Manickchand has condemned the torching of the One Mile Primary School in Linden yesterday morning and questioned what would become of the 830 students registered there with the new school year set to begin in just a few weeks.
Early yesterday, the school-which according to the minister is the largest in the region- was torched by men who stormed the compound and told security guards on duty that they were part of the “struggle” before setting the building alight using bottles of gasoline. Hours after the fire, acting Commissioner of Police Leroy Brumell told Stabroek News that two men were taken into custody following the incident and one of them is well known for selling candy and other eatables around the township and was known as ‘Candyman.’
Region Ten Chairman Sharma Solomon last evening also condemned the burning of the school stating that “no one in their right mind would support the burning of any schools” and he called for the perpetrators to be prosecuted to the fullest extent. Solomon also noted that it is the vigilance of the protestors that resulted in ‘Candyman’ being apprehended and according to him the man was even interrogated-a process recorded-by residents before he was taken into police custody. He said that the protestors are very wary of persons who are attempting to “infiltrate them” and bent on destruction.
Since the protest actions began on July 18 several buildings were burnt with the first being the Linden Secretariat complex which was set ablaze shortly after protestors Linden Lewis, Ron Samuels and Shemroy Bouyea were shot and killed by police.
Then early Friday morning several other buildings in the same compound as the Linden Secretariat – in the old Guymine Linden compound- at Washer Pond Road, Mackenzie were set ablaze. These housed the Guyana Revenue Authority Office; the Linden Care Foundation Office which also operated a soup kitchen; the Institute of Distance and Continuing Education (IDCE) and the Linden Electricity Company Office. At Silvertown, Wismar the building that housed the Linden Salvation Council and another building owned by the Linden Community Development Trust Incorporated but which housed the Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints Church were also razed. The toll booths at the bridge linking Mackenzie and Wismar were also destroyed by fire.
‘Must condemn’
Manickchand in her statement said that every peace loving person and citizen must condemn the burning of the school.
“There can be no ifs and buts and conditions. This is wrong, will affect our innocent children, will create grave hardship for all involved, and must be unreservedly condemned,” the minister said in the statement.
She said while the government respects the right to peaceful protest no person in their right mind can argue that to burn bridges, block roads and torch a school constitute peaceful protest.
According to the minister it will be challenging for the Ministry to place the 830 children in schools that are already filled.
“It will certainly be challenging on the pockets of their poor parents to find transportation and other money to send these now school-less children to other schools given that the one closest to their home has been burnt to the ground,” she pointed out.
The schools at which the children will be placed will also suffer since they would be accommodating far beyond their capacity and as such teaching below their maximum.
“Linden has the most trained teachers in Guyana with 93% of the primary level trained but, even so, now instead of the schools focusing on quality delivery they will now have to focus on mass and on counteracting the challenges posed by increased numbers. So in effect much more than the said 830 One Mile Primary kids will suffer,” the minister said.
She also pointed out that schools are not built overnight and the difficult circumstances would have to be endured by those affected for as long as the children are forced to attend other schools. The ministry however will stand with the education officers, head teachers and teachers, parents and students throughout what will surely be a most difficult period, the minister said.
“We are failing at the Ministry to understand how to burn a school could be determined to be an effective way to protest reform for the payment of electricity rates. We believe that the people of Linden are being used by the politicians who do not so much care about Lindeners as they do about advancing their own wild and undemocratic agendas,” the minister charged.
She called on all right thinking members of society, political leaders, religious leaders, business people and ordinary Guyanese, to join in condemnation of this most heinous act.
‘Not electrical’
Meantime, Phillip Bynoe, who is the Chairman of the Linden Salvation Council and the Linden Community Development Trust Incor-porated, yesterday said that while he was initially told that the fire that destroyed the building may have been electrical, later reports suggested that the first was deliberately set. Since receiving the report Bynoe said he has asked a senior police officer to ensure that an investigation is launched immediately so that the cause of the fire could be determined.
Giving a background to the buildings Bynoe told Stabroek News that the two buildings were constructed between 2000 and 2001. He said in 1999 electricity provider Texas Ohio Energy was approached by the Linden Salvation Council to do a project within the community which would have consisted of a feeding programme as well as to establish a building for drug rehabilitation. A piece of land was later acquired through the Government and Texas Ohio Energy financed the construction of the building in front and that building was vested in the name of the Linden Community Development Trust Incorporated which was a stakeholder-based company that was set up. The salvation council building in the meantime was built through self help. According to Bynoe the council carried out community activities and the building housed a kitchen and only recently an additional office was built at the front of the building. The building was used to distribute clothing from overseas persons and it also supported thousand of Lindeners with hampers.
The Linden Community Development Trust Incor-porated building once housed an office for the Guyana Elections Commission but more recently it was rented out to the Latter Day Saints Church.
Bynoe said that millions of dollars were lost in the fire.
“All we ever did in that building [Salvation Council building] was to support this community support the less fortunate in the community. Many of the persons who are on the road picketing and carrying out their activities, thousands of them have passed through that building sometime or the other in the past and had received some level of assistance from the Linden Salvation Council,” Bynoe said.
He said they had also established a sewing enterprise with raw cloth from Minister of Human Services & Social Security Jennifer Webster and a sewing machine from Food for the Poor and single parents used this to sew clothing at the building.
Bynoe, a controversial figure in the community who had had close ties to the PNCR but is now linked to the ruling PPP/C, said that people conjure up all kinds of notions about him but they do not know him and many have been badgering him asking why he is not involved in the current protest but he indicated that he wanted nothing to do with the exercise.
“I said I wanted to stay out and I would make no comment for or against what is happening [since] the people of Linden, Region 10 selected their leaders and those leaders must do whatever they think is best in the interest of the people who elected them. I would not jump in,” Bynoe declared.
He said he has not left his house since July 18, the day the protest began in earnest and resulted in three deaths but he now believes that people are attempting to draw him into the protest by torching the two buildings since many believed he owned them and called them “Bynoe buildings.” He said they are now saying that he paid persons to burn the school in retaliation. Three persons have called him and told him this, Bynoe said adding that he would never support the destruction of a school since he believes that the “salvation of a black man rests in education.” He said his life has been threatened and some have also threatened to burn his house. (Oluatoyin Alleyne)
