Dear Editor,
There is a letter in today’s Stabroek News (1st June, 2023) which attacks me, noting, it says “the deafening silence of the Private Sector Commission and their oft times spokespersons like Gerry Gouveia and Kit Nascimento”, on the subject of the Mahdia tragedy and the Mazaruni prison escape. The letter goes on, quite wrongly, to claim that we are quick to comment when we “are ready to praise this Government”. The letter writer has withheld his/her name and address, not having the courage of his/her convictions. Wherefore their credibility? In fact, the Stabroek news is editorially irresponsible for publishing a letter publicly attacking any person while withholding the name of its author.
No sane Guyanese can be anything but horrified at the death of the children in the fire at the Mahdia Secondary School dormitory. As a result, there has been a plethora of letters, the great majority of them choosing to lay blame at the feet of the government, while ignoring that those children would be alive today had it not been for the fact that the fire was deliberately and criminally started in the first place. Now, there has been a long letter signed by a large group of persons, the majority of whom are known for their political animosity towards the government and some others who should know better, demanding that the student who lit the fire should not be prosecuted for murder. I must ask, has that group consulted the parents of the children who have lost their lives on how they feel about that? I have lost a son, though much older than those children.
I have some idea of what they may feel, the anguish, the trauma, the disbelief, in this case the anger, that their child is no more, a victim of a fire which was deliberately set. The Director of Public Prosecution has made it clear that this charge has been brought in accordance with the Juvenile Justice Act, that the hearing of this case will be in the Juvenile Court and that the rule of law will be respected and applied. I have not commented on this matter because it is much too early to do so sensibly, other than to offer my sympathy and my prayers for the loss of these young lives, because the facts are not yet known and, unfortunately, the media, without exception, have indulged in and encouraged widespread and ill-informed speculation.
The children, we know, were imprisoned from escape from the fire by the fact that the windows of the dormitory were heavily grilled. We know that the grilling was done as much to prevent these girls from leaving at night to meet with men who prey upon them, as much as to keep criminals out. Nevertheless, we also know, myself included, that we bar our homes with grillwork, which itself endangers our lives in the event of a fire in our homes. We know that the fire service inspected the dormitory and identified this fire hazard. We do not yet know, however, what official notice, if any, was taken of this warning.
I strongly hold the view that in any society, incompetence thrives in an administrative environment when no one is held accountable, and much of that obtains in our country, but blame for incompetence cannot be apportioned and rectification of it cannot be achieved without full exposure of the facts which led to the incompetence. This is precisely why the President has announced his intention to appoint a Commission of Inquiry to obtain the facts, to apportion accountability, if and where it belongs and, hopefully, ensure that what so tragically went wrong will not happen again.
Sincerely,
Kit Nascimento
