Editorial

In the aftermath of the loss of nearly 5,000 jobs in the industry, Friday’s announcement by the Guyana Sugar Corporation that it has created a coordinating committee for its ‘Sustainable and Resilient Communities Programme’ and ‘Alternative Livelihoods Initiative’ can only be seen as another sign of the gross failure of the APNU+AFC administration to come to grips with its responsibilities.

The Foreign Ministry could hardly have been surprised when on Monday, June 18, Venezuela made it known that it did not intend to participate in proceedings brought by Guyana in the International Court of Justice with regard to Caracas’s claim that the 1899 settlement of the border between the two countries was null and void.

Last week, on World Refugee Day, the Guardian printed the names of 34,361 migrants who have died since the early 1990s, while trying to enter Europe.

It is perhaps an inescapable fact, applicable to countries around the world, that the public has a notoriously short memory.

Unemployment and poor infrastructure are two of the recurring themes in our Sunday feature, the World Beyond Georgetown.

The 2018 World Cup kicked off last Thursday with the usual pomp and ceremony, and the fans of the game are filled with hope that their country will be lifting the World Cup trophy come Sunday, 15th July.

It appears that one of Town Clerk Royston King’s difficulties as Head of the Georgetown Municipality’s administration is his lack of understanding of how much the image of his administration depends on the goodwill of the citizenry, a circumstance that is decidedly surprising given the fact that  he had served as the City’s Public Relations Officer immediately prior to being elevated to Town Clerk and would therefore have come to his current job with some understanding of the virtues of image-management.

One of the innovations of constitutional reform, the sectoral committees of Parliament can undoubtedly help to richen the engagement between the people and the legislature.

The Gay Pride March which was held earlier this month in Georgetown was less significant in terms of what it represented in and of itself, than for the fact that it generated yet again the fundamental debate on the decriminalisation of homosexuality.

Two weeks ago, a New York Times op-ed by Anne Richard, a former assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration asked “Is the United States Losing Its Humanity?”

The recent death by suicide of American celebrity chef, television personality, travel documentarian and author, CNN’s Anthony Bourdain, has placed the spotlight once more on the issue of mental health awareness and treatment.

Just think about it. Prior to 2004, there was no such thing as social media.

Tomorrow, the world’s population will begin its quadrennial vacation from reality.

When public officers who knowingly place themselves in harm’s way in pursuit of enforcement of the law are harmed or come under attack from those whose criminal pursuits they seek to deter, not only do law-abiding citizens have a duty to roundly condemn such acts and to insist that the perpetrators are determinedly ferreted out and suitably punished, but the state itself has an obligation to place every available resource at the disposal of the effort to hunt down and apprehend the guilty parties.

As the government inches along with presenting the final draft of its local content policy (LCP)  for the oil and gas sector, it released from its major operator thus far, Esso Exploration and Production Guyana Limited (EEPGL) a list of 227 goods and services suppliers utilised this year.

Chief Justice (acting) Roxane George’s decision on Friday upholding what is now the unfettered discretion by President Granger in deciding who should be Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission is the most retrograde development in the arena of electoral laws and reforms since 1991.  

Last week, a Brooklyn army base called the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency when a pizza delivery man could not produce adequate documentation.

One critical flaw in the management of this country that has not changed even one iota, despite the changes in the managers over the years, is our seemingly wilful or unwitting neglect of many state institutions, both with regard to systems and infrastructure.

Two Thursdays ago, Minister of Public Health Volda Lawrence launched revised food-based dietary guidelines for Guyana in collaboration with the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (UN), tweaking and updating those that were established in 2004.

Over the past decade, Guyana has seen a proliferation in the establishment of private educational institutions at all levels, most notably at the post secondary and tertiary levels.