Editorial

Last Friday, the Guyana Chronicle reported that Minister of Business Dominic Gaskin had indicated that his Ministry was “in the advance(d) stages” of preparation for the introduction of the Small Business Procurement Programme, the provision under the 2004 Small Business Act for small businesses to access 20 per cent of state contracts.

The chaos in the sugar sector under the APNU+AFC government might have been easily dismissed were it not for the fact that it has upturned the lives of thousands of former GuySuCo employees and the future of many more hangs in the balance.

There has never been a Minister of Labour, senior or junior, in this country quite as ill informed, blundering or precipitate as Mr Keith Scott, the present incumbent.

This week, two impassioned statements captured the tone of the American culture wars rekindled  by the #MeToo movement.

The issue of responsible drinking (or combating excessive alcohol consumption) has been a much discussed, but unresolved matter being grappled with by the authorities.

Just about a month after the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) published their joint ‘Drinking Water, Sanitation and Hygiene in Schools: 2018 Global Baseline Report,’ came the news that a non-secular, non-government organisation made up of young people affiliated with the First Assembly of God Church at D’Urban Street, Wortmanville had constructed handwashing facilities for the Charlestown Secondary School.

Last week Thursday, on the luxury tourist destination of the Seychelles, an archipelago of 115 islands located in the northern Indian Ocean about 1,000 miles off the coast of Kenya, one of the smallest countries in the world, the world of sport experienced one of the worst betrayals ever by a ruling body.

The idea behind last week’s Guyana Trade and Investment Exhibition (GuyTIE) event at the Marriott Hotel as far as the public/private sector organizers had said some weeks ago was, in the main, to bring together, overseas buyers and local sellers in business to business (B2B) encounters with the hoped-for outcome of expanding regional and global market access for goods and services offered here in Guyana.

Nomination Day on Friday for Local Government Elections (LGE) on November 12 was a seminal development as it set in train consecutive elections for grassroots democracy in under three years.

The incident the week before last involving Berbice lawyer, Mr Ryan Crawford, and a policeman generated a plethora of comment on the limits of police powers to stop and search, and considerably less on Mr Crawford’s uncivil behaviour.

Judge Kavanaugh’s controversial confirmation hearing marks a transitional moment in American culture.

Ask any citizen if they would like to see increased police action against all levels and types of criminals and we can expect an answer in the affirmative.

There has been some amount of consternation expressed over the reported “discovery of the recreational drug ecstasy in five schools,” which came about as a result of “investigations” by the Customs Anti-Narcotic Unit (CANU), according to the agency’s Deputy Head Lesley Ramlall, who was speaking at the opening of his organisation’s annual staff training on Monday.

In ancient times, long before the inventions of the railroad and the field of telecommunications, messages were relayed by the age old tradition of professional running messengers.

The trajectory of the industrial relations dispute between government and the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU) now appears imprisoned in a familiar pattern of uncertainty and suspicion (some may even say bad faith) with each side striving to avoid being outflanked, this, as the increasingly coarse texture of the engagement appears to push the issue further away from an amicable resolution.

In February this year, the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) sent a letter to the United Nations Resident Coordinator in Guyana requesting UN electoral assistance for the 2018 local government and 2020 general elections. 

We have a habit of describing Guyana as multicultural – which it is.

When Canada patriated its Constitution in 1981, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau struck a compromise with wary Quebec nationalists by including a “notwithstanding clause” within the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

World Suicide Prevention Day was observed on Monday, September 10, 2018 and the attention was drawn once again to mental health issues in Guyana, as we are wont to give only periodic bursts of attention to such critical matters.

Between Monday and today, at least one million residents of coastal areas in Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina in the United States would have evacuated their homes, provided they followed the orders they were given in the face of Hurricane Florence, which is set to hit these areas by tomorrow.