Dear Editor,
Not long after the tragedy that happened at the Mahdia dorm, pursuant to a question asked by the press, I said to a full media corps that the Report that was done on school dormitories was commissioned by the Ministry of Education, done by Deen and Partners, paid for by UNICEF and “shared with the relevant parties.” I explained the different roles of the various ministries and indicated that said roles came about because the law mandated the decentralization of Government. Not long after that, I said that it would be helpful to leave the questions surrounding who received the Report and what actions were taken to the COI that had by then already been announced by the President. The SN covered and carried in its publications the above utterances by me in their pages. Repeatedly. In their columns, as well as in more than 17 editorials written on the matter from then to now.
Even though I said that the Report had been shared with the relevant parties and even though the SN reported same, the SN editorials opined frequently that the Report had not been shared with anyone and that nothing had been done with it since I received it. Apparently, I had gone to the trouble of determining we needed a holistic study of the dorms in Guyana, finding an agency to fund the Report and then expending my time in sitting with the consultants to indicate the purpose and value of the Report and what was expected from them, all knowing that I would do nothing with the Report once I received it. This is what the SN would have their readers believe.
SN covered the testimony given at the COI on 10th October 2023 by Saddam Hussain, the country’s Chief Education Officer and reported on the same. In his testimony, the CEO said clearly, “… The dorms did not become what they are in 2020. It was a long series of neglect which positioned the dorms to where they are. This neglect which made us say that look, one of the first things we are going to do in 2021 to 2025 as part of our education sector plan is, we are going to look at what the dorms are. We are going to first of all, get a minimal set of standards of what they are and we are going to find out how far we are from those standards. That is what the Ministry of Education’s Report, funded by UNICEF (not a UNICEF report). It is a Ministry of Education report, funded by UNICEF.
……. This Report is more than 15 years in the making. This is not something new. We are very fortunate in that we have the particular Minister of Education right now, the Hon. Priya Manickchand. What had happened is, in Minister’s previous capacity as the head of social services, she had done a similar report to look at the minimum standards for orphanages and care-giving homes. When she came to the Ministry of Education, when the Hon. Minister came to Education, she wanted to look at the same thing in terms of dormitory facilities. It started between 2011-2014. Of course, there was a change in Government, and that was not a part of the priority of that Government. It then resuscitated. The idea resuscitated in August, 2020. I am aware, in November, 2020 we sat in a meeting and the Hon. Minister said, as a priority she wants part of our education sector plan for the next five years, we are going to look at dormitory facilities.
What we did, and you will find in my statement, I quoted from the education sector plan, the objective and what we intended to do. We wanted to know two things. We wanted to know the current standard of the dorms and we wanted to know what we needed to do, and the costing as well of getting there. Once it was in the sector plan and it was in the budget for the consultancy, the consultant began working on it in late 2021.
….. Following that Report, immediately systems began to be put in place for the implementation and the subsequent renovations to the dorms. What has to be understood is, the costing of this Report is close to about three billion Guyana dollars, that had to be found in order to fix all of the dorms. This was middle of 2022. Budget had already passed and so there was not a $3 billion lying around that you could just pull and renovate…. I think this is something which is missed. Let us say, for the sake of argument that in September, 2022, we began the process of renovating all the dorms. What do I do with the occupants of the dorms? This was the professional decision which was tendered to the Minister and the Government of Guyana. You cannot take out all the students from the dorms and just let them be. We felt it was a better option to gradually repair the dorms….
…. That very Report says that Mahdia was not one of the top priorities to be addressed. In fact, Mahdia had one issue and that is with a constant supply of electricity and water….. I am advised through two sources that the Report was shared with Cabinet – one, I attended a number of budgetary meetings. And so, from those meetings, I gathered that this document was laid to the Cabinet. I also …. was copied to an email which suggested to me that the Report was made…was laid…was copied to the Minister of Finance, as well as to the Minister of Local Government and from that, I gathered that it was laid in Cabinet…it was laid to the Cabinet. I also gathered from the email that there was immediate…there was an immediate decision by Cabinet to move ahead with the correction of those things that needed to be done. I can say at this point…. I could add at this point, up to today, $882 million has been expended on dorms from 2022 to current. By the end of the year, we expect to touch a billion dollars because we are still awaiting a number of awards for these dorms…”
Yet the SN, through its editorial of 31st October 2023, continues to say that “… That Report sat with Minister Manickchand for a year with no evidence that it had been actioned…. Will anyone ever now discuss the Report or should it be taken for granted that any report done in the future by any agency – foreign or local – should be simply discarded or considered wasted money?… An examination of the Minister on the Report would have established two important pieces of the puzzle. Did she and her Ministry take it seriously? If so, what did the Cabinet, including President Ali and the rest of the Government, do with it? Did the Minister, for instance, reach out to the Minister of Finance for information on what funding could be immediately found to revamp the dormitories?…”
That the Report was actioned and how it was actioned is apparent in Mr. Hussain’s testimony. All of the questions asked in this latest editorial and more were answered in the CEO’s testimony, which was public and at which the SN was present. Why, then, would this newspaper continue to posit as above?
To avoid doubt, I say, as I have publicly said before, the last such time was on the Gildarie/Kissoon show on Wednesday. Making sure school dormitories are comfortable was an endeavour we were pursuing during the 2011-2015 period. What we found then was that dorms, which fell under the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development because of the statutory (by law) decentralization of the country, were doing their own thing. There was no standardization. One Region would treat dorms one way, and another would treat them another way. One Region would have adequate toilets and no fire extinguishers, and another would have adequate fire extinguishers but inadequate toilets. One would have an organized games/after-school programme, and one would have none. Funding for dormitories through the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development also depended on how the particular Region treated dormitories and what they sought in their annual budgets. This resulted in children not receiving the best accommodation that was possible.
This status quo was very similar to the status I found with the then privately run orphanages and care homes in Guyana while I served at the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security in or around 2006/2007. Each orphanage was doing its own thing, and while they were neither Government-run nor government-funded because they were dealing with the nation’s children, we commissioned and published the Minimum Standards for Orphanages and Care Homes.
This was reported in the Stabroek News on 19th June 2008: “For the first time in Guyana, managers of orphanages would have regulations to comply with as the Ministry of Human Services and Social Security has set out some 25 standards in a booklet.
Launched yesterday, the booklet titled ‘Minimum Operational Standards & Regulations for Children’s Homes in Guyana’, was compiled following consultations with a number of stakeholders including persons who operate orphanages, with the support of UNICEF. Compliance with the standards and regulations by the homes is voluntary. However, Minister of Human Services and Social Security, Priya Manickchand, told Stabroek News that non-compliance would see her Ministry taking the necessary steps even if it meant moving to the courts.” There, too, the Ministry did not have direct responsibility for the subject of the report. There too the Ministry did not have the funding to commission the Report by itself and sought the help of UNICEF.
After this was shared with said Orphanages and Care homes and compliance was encouraged and supervised, we saw a massive improvement in the service offered at the said homes. People
(managers, caregivers, users of the system) then knew what was required, in what quantity and for what reason. It is with knowledge of how that worked that we attempted to do the same thing for school dormitories in Guyana in commissioning this Report. However, the Ministry of Education had neither direct responsibility for the same nor the budgetary allocation to implement.
After I received said Report (early July 2022) I shared immediately with the Ministers of Finance and Local Government and Regional Development. For obvious reasons. The Ministry of Finance would have to provide the budgetary allocations needed to heed the Report, and the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development would receive said money and have responsibility for the maintenance, upkeep, repairs, renovations, etc, of dorms in accordance with said Report. Additionally, the Ministry of Local Government could advise its officers of the contents of the Report and the changes necessary. Not long after I shared same, I laid said document before the Cabinet (August 2022), where the Report was considered, and decisions were made, to wit, that there would be an inclusion in the budgets over a few years, an appropriate sum that would see the eventual compliance with the recommendations in the Report. Later, but prior to the fire (April 2023), in yet another deliberation of the said Report, decisions were taken at the Cabinet that all the recommendations would be implemented. Alongside that decision were the decisions that all schools would get grants, all teachers’ quarters would be built, teachers’ salaries would be regularized, etc. Teachers’ salaries were regularized this month. Grants were given in September 2023. A supplemental was appropriated in the National Assembly in August for repairs of dorms, building of teachers’ quarters, etc.
Subsequent to that, the Cabinet, in another deliberation of the said Report after the fire, decided that each dorm would be immediately outfitted with fire prevention and fire-fighting tools and equipment, that doors would not be grilled, that each dorm would have adequate dorm parents and security personnel, adequate beds and working bathrooms. The Guyana Fire Service affixed the various tools and implements, including but not limited to exit signs, extinguishers, fireballs, and smoke alarms, in quantities they deemed appropriate.
Additionally, the following dorms have been/are being repaired/renovated in accordance with the Report: Santa Rosa Dorms in Region 1; Anna Regina, Aurora, Charity and Wakapao Dorms in Region 2; the Mahaicony Dorm in Region 5; the Skeldon Dorm in Region 6, The Aishalton Dorms in Region 9, Linden Foundation Dorms in Region 10. Paramakatoi Dorms in Region 8 and 3 Miles Dorms in Region 7 have been assessed, and the bills of quantities for the work done, but in both cases, the contractors will require several months to do what is required. The officials in various Ministries (Education, Local Government, Amerindian Affairs, Human Services and Social Security) are currently contemplating what would be the best way to get that done, given that the experience is that if these dorms are closed for long periods of time, children are lost to formal Education.
The APNU+AFC had an entire COI into the education sector in Guyana. The Hansards will show that I asked at least on three occasions in the National Assembly for that to be laid over so that the nation could see where we were. We never got access to that Report. Either in the National Assembly or elsewhere. As soon as I went into office in 2020, I asked for the Report, hoping to be guided by it as far as dorms were concerned. This was to continue the work that we had started pre-2015 on getting dorms more adequately ready for students. The Report identified that dormitories were inadequate but did or said nothing more regarding dormitories. In 2021, a report ( the Deen and Partners Report) was commissioned and shared with all the relevant parties. This evidences a recognition that all was not well with the dorms, and without more, in and of itself, evidences a desire and intention to correct that circumstance. But more was done. Subsequent budgetary provisions made before the fire to fix the dorms (in order of priority, which the writers of the Report identified) give the clearest indication that the Report would always have been implemented. Why would one ask for minimum standards of dorms to be drafted, for a report on the status of each dorm vis-a-vis those standards, for an approximate cost of fixing accordingly, if one were not going to pursue its implementation forcefully? I ask readers to ask that question.
Now that the SN has this information all in one place, which I contend they had before, it would be interesting and telling if editorials and/or articles were to continue to peddle that nothing had been done for dorms and/or with the Report after it had been received.
Scrutiny of Ministers is necessary. I wouldn’t want to live in a country where that didn’t exist or isn’t allowed. Similarly, newspapers have to be responsible and accountable and must be wedded to truth and fact. They cannot be allowed to push an agenda without regard for truth, fact or even consideration for what they themselves have written and published before.
Ironically titled ‘Accountability and Governance, ’ one of the editorials about the Mahdia fire sought to make an obvious point on 29th May by saying that “…A year later, when the entire prison burnt down ….. the PPP/C unsuccessfully moved a motion in Parliament where speakers – including the current minister of education,… – called again for Mr Ramjattan to go….”
The Hansard, the official record of Parliament of that day, shows that I said, “I am NOT going to offer an opinion on whether I believe my learned friend Mr Ramjattan should resign, he is here and he seems happily ensconced in that ministerial office…” what I actually said is diametrically opposed to what the editorial boldly claims I said.
We cannot make up facts and/or skew the reality to make our point. Even as we demand better for our country and her people, we must stay wedded to the truth. Editorials and articles can be just as interesting with reasoned and factual content. And, in fact, staying wedded to the truth is useful and has great value in progressive conversations about the development of our country.
Sincerely,
Priya Manickchand
Editor-in-Chief’s note: We thank Minister Manickchand for her detailed explanation. Even in her own rendering of the Chief Education Officer’s testimony before the Commission of Inquiry (CoI), it is clear that he had no direct knowledge of what was being done with the report as he couldn’t. It was really for the minister who commissioned the report to provide this testimony directly to the CoI and for it to question her where necessary. It is also worthy of note that there was no public disclosure of this report after the fire until Stabroek News reported on its contents.
Though not clear cut, what members of the public have wanted to know since the tragedy is why matters like the removal, at least, of grills were not immediately prioritised given the low cost of doing this and particularly as the fire service had twice pressed this issue in relation to the Mahdia dormitory at the Region Eight council.
