Dear Editor,
I appreciate the fact that the US Embassy has responded to my suggestion for informing the public about the LEAD project. However releasing documents and correspondence to the media and releasing them to the people of Guyana are two very different things.
The people should be able to read and analyse the project documents for themselves rather than relying on second hand information filtered by journalists – however good and professional those journalists might be. In addition, in our society, with its rich ethnic and cultural mix, different citizens will bring different perspectives, opinions and knowledge to the discussion and contribute to a deeper understanding of the issues.
Obviously if the documents have been released to the media they can be made available to the people. I suggest that the US Embassy puts the project documents somewhere prominent on the US embassy website. By project documents I mean the concept note, project description, budget, terms of reference for the various consultancies, etc.
Yours faithfully,
Melinda Janki