Oluatoyin Alleyne

In honour of Father’s Day, Sunday Stabroek interviewed Wil Campbell, teacher and counsellor, on the challenges of being a father and what the role demands.

In another country Patricia Bacchus might be practising human rights law, but not in Guyana.

Although denying he “washed his hands” of the probe into Dr Walter Rodney’s death, former Chief of Staff of the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) Major General (rtd) Norman McLean yesterday testified that he knew nothing of the investigation and said that he was even unaware of reports that an army plane transported main suspect Gregory Smith into Kwakwani.

To some she is known as the ‘Iron Lady’ – maybe for the same reason former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was so dubbed – but when Jacquelyn Major is out in the street supervising road projects she knows she must have an iron grip on what is happening to ensure the timely and exact completion of works.

Every time 28-year-old Donnis Brookes looks at her body, the many scars remind her of the years of abuse she endured at the hands of the man who had promised to love and cherish her.

Director of the Child Care & Protection Agency (CC&PA) Ann Greene has said that there is high tolerance for the sexual abuse of children in the Guyanese society even as she lamented the recent acquittal of a stepfather who was accused of violating a little a girl and the hung jury in the Sade Stoby trial.

-Anthony says action taken on interim findings, signals plans to discontinue co-education Youth Minister Dr Frank Anthony yesterday said that his ministry is still to receive the final report from the Board of Inquiry (BoI) that investigated the 2012 mass escape and fire at the New Opportunity Corps (NOC) and letters written to the inquiry’s Chairman retired Justice Winston Moore have yielded no results.

– as Roman Catholic community joins fight The Guyana Women Miners Organisation (GWMO) in partnership with the Sisters of Mercy and more so the Roman Catholic community is set to open the first ever home for survivors of human trafficking which is aimed at ultimately giving them a fresh start in life.

– Chand Saying that a “silver lining” is beginning to emerge for the struggling sugar industry, President of the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU) Komal Chand yesterday said GuySuCo’s viability is contingent on its ability to grow a good quantity and quality cane.

A dislike for injustice is what led to Danuta Radzik becoming a women’s activist, and after more than 30 years in the field she cannot turn a blind eye to people abusing power especially in relation to persons who are vulnerable.

Targeting proposed budgetary allocations for both the National Communica-tions Network (NCN) and Government Information Agency (GINA), the parliamentary opposition yesterday voted down the entire $5.1B Office of the President (OP) budget for Administrative Services, sinking funding for other unrelated entities in the process.

Some residents of Orealla village on the Corentyne River are calling for the removal of the current Toshao alleging that he has been mismanaging the village’s assets and not properly accounting for its finances.

One of the victims in the recently dismissed hu-man trafficking cases against shop owner Ann Marie Carter has called upon the authorities to re-open the case and give her a chance to testify against the woman whom she alleges brutalized her.

APNU leader David Granger last evening gave notice of the main opposition’s intention to withhold support for proposed spending that is not in the nation’s interest, while  saying government’s estimates in its $220B national budget do not cater for the poor, the workers, the young, the aged and is driven by politics and not economics.

While Minister of Edu-cation Priya Manickchand boasted about the advancements made in the education sector, APNU’s shadow minister Amna Ally criticised spending in the sector, saying the nation’s children are not the real beneficiaries.

Owners of small businesses in Guyana frown on record-keeping mostly because many don’t pay taxes even though they understand the importance of having their records up to date, according to University of Guyana part-time lecturer and business trainer Denise Bentinck “In Guyana people involved in small business have a practice of not wanting to keep records and instead they commit information to their heads,” Bentinck told Sunday Stabroek in a recent interview.

In a surprise move, APNU Member of Parliament Jaipaul Sharma yesterday resigned from the National Assembly over a comment made about his father by Education Minister Priya Manickchand during the budget debate even as Speaker Raphael Trotman lifted a ban he had earlier imposed on the minister following her refusal to apologise to her fellow MP.

Saying that the proposed $220 billion budget seeks to bring balance in income distribution and the national “pie of wealth,” Minister of Housing and Water Irfaan Ali pilloried APNU’s Shadow Finance Minister Carl Greenidge for criticising the estimates for spending this year but not offering any concrete alternatives to improve the lives of citizens.

Guyana has failed to develop a consolidated response to the growing problem of domestic violence and “while nothing gets done… women and children especially continue to die,” lecturer and programme officer in the Women’s Studies Unit (WSU) University of Guyana, Audrey Benn says.

The current Sexual Offences Act has strong legislative power but there is a gap in terms of its implementation.