Dear Editor,
This letter is in response to your strange editorial 09/30/2023, `Why not privatise everything?’ Objectivity, confines me to a discussion of established facts rather than an academic response to the undertones of class and race in the editorial.
As you are aware, education was primarily a religious/private institution in this country until the PNC made it public. Subsequently, public education became a failure under that regime. It was under the PPP Gov’t that private education was nursed back to health and again became vibrant. In a free society, people must have choices.
Next, the state of public healthcare also began its decline under the PNC and remains in poor condition. Fortunately for the general public, it has historically had a private option when it came to healthcare. Thank God! Because of its progressive policies, successive PPP Governments have expended billions of dollars rebuilding public hospitals and expanding healthcare services across the nation. Many new hospitals are scheduled to open and others are in the planning stage. Still, the public healthcare system remains woefully inadequate. Without private health services, many more, including the poor, would suffer a certain death at the emergency rooms in public hospitals.
Again the right to choose, here, is a life or death decision.
Editor, do we really need to remind the Guyanese people under whose oppressive watch – crime and lawlessness – became the order of the day? Crime and poverty became synonymous with PNC rule. Unfortunately, all PPP Gov’ts, from 1992 to present, have failed miserably to restore law and order. Of course, it was not for a lack of trying, but failure is failure. Today, the Police Force is itself a haven for all sorts of criminal enterprises. Naturally, under a state of siege, citizens will resort to personal means of defense. I applaud the PPP Gov’t for continuing to issue more firearm licences to citizens. May I remind your readers that one of the very first draconian measures taken by the Burnham-PNC regime, was stripping citizens of the right to bear arms.
Finally, let’s revisit public transportation in this country. Was it not the Burnham-PNC that ripped up our efficiently operated Railway system and sold it off for scrap metal. Even the city bus service, once enjoyed by the residents of Georgetown, died an inevitable death. Throughout this country, and for as long as we had roads, privately operated bus companies, provided the traveling public with transportation. The poor and the not-so-poor relied on the train and buses from Berbice to Essequibo. Even the early river boats were privately held.
Editor, you could not disagree that it’s a fundamental right of citizens in a free society to be able to make choices over their education, healthcare, security and transportation.
Respectfully,
Fuad Rahaman
