Dear Editor,
It’s a disgrace to see a certain political party using a couple of parents to picket schools and the Ministry of Education for a mere pittance of We Care $10,000 vouchers for their own political ends, while millions were unaccounted for while they were in office. I happened to drive past the Cotton Field Secondary School and saw about 13 women picketing with known PPP activists, shouting, “No voucher, no school.” I had to take a second look to see if it was the teachers on strike because of the chanting.
I stopped and I saw two top officials belonging to the PPP which heads the Regional Democratic Council Pomeroon/Supenaam, Region Two, holding placards and I assumed that there were paid picketers from that same party, trying to make the newly elected coalition look bad. The officials are being paid by taxpayers to conduct government business and should have been in their offices to meet with members of the public to hear their complaints and address them. I was later made to understand that a number of rice farmers went to meet with the officers to fix their dams so they can bring out their paddy without much difficulty, but on arriving at the office they were told that the two officials were not in, The farmers and other members of the public had come from as far as Charity and Supenaam and nearby communities only to be turned away.
As far as I can remember this We Care $10,000 was implemented in 2014, coming near to the elections on May 11 2015, so people would vote for the PPP. Most of the parents and guardians who received this money did not buy uniforms or books for their children; some of the children do not even attend school, and the money was spent on other things. No one from the Education Department ever monitored the situation to see if the children of parents who received the money were attending school.
As a little boy I had to help my parents in the rice field planting and reaping the rice when school was closed. This was so my parents could get money to feed my 7 brothers and 2 sisters and buy school clothes, books and shoes. We never depended on We Care vouchers; in fact there was nothing like We Care $10,000. If our school uniforms were torn, my mother would patch them and we would attend school in them; sometimes we would go to school without shoes when they were damaged.
The only thing we received in our school days was two cups of milk and biscuits from the school feeding programme; there was nothing like brand name pants, shirts, shoes or boots. My mother after receiving money from my father’s paddy crop would go to the shop and buy the cloth and we would go to the village tailor. He would then sew our school pants and shirts, without help from government. I managed to get a higher education. I first started out attending school at St Agnes Anglican School, Danielstown, some 2 miles away from home. Every morning and afternoon I would walk to school; life was no bed of roses. I later attended Rosignol Secondary School in Berbice, far from my home, and later went to Berbice High School in New Amsterdam.
My parents made a lot of sacrifices to educate 9 children without one penny of assistance from government; I also made that same sacrifice for my two sons without We Care, and they were able to attend CPCE, GSA and the University of Guyana where both of them gained a degree with credit. They are now doing their masters’ degrees overseas. Education is better than silver and gold; knowledge is a treasure so seek it. Don’t depend on hand-outs from any government if you want an education; just make the sacrifice and don’t let any political party use you for their personal agenda or gain. A parent’s duty is to take care of their children from nursery to university.
Yours faithfully,
Mohamed Khan