Editorial

On Friday May 3, the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations (UN) welcomed the resolution adopted by the United Nations General Assembly (proposed by the United States of America and adopted by consensus) inviting the FAO, in collaboration with the other UN agencies, to facilitate the implementation and observance of the International Year of the Woman Farmer.

Last week on his Facebook page, attorney at law Darren Wade queried the presence of Education Ministry Permanent Secretary, Shannielle Hoosein-Outar at the just concluded PPP Congress.

The PPP lives in what it perceives to be a binary local universe:  there is the party and there is the opposition.

Sunday’s announcement that the PPP’s 32nd Congress had taken a decision to erase Marxism-Leninism and Socialism from its Constitution is epochal in several ways.

Some of the Indigenous nations have been in contact with Europeans and later coastal society for hundreds of years. 

The growth and movement of the world’s population are continuing to engage the attention of the United Nations (UN), particularly in the context of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) and their 2030 achievement date, which becomes increasingly unattainable owing mostly to conflict and greed.

“Jaguars WC [World Cup] Qualifier ‘home’ game against Belize to be played in Barbados” was the headline of a story that ran in this publication’s sports pages on 30th April.

Amidst the official preoccupation with the perceived development prospects that repose in an economic engine which, these days, is driven by oil, it is easy to ‘leave aside’ the discipline-related crisis in significant sections of our education system which, for want of any serious attempt at remedy, up to this time, grows, to the considerable discredit of the Ministry of Education.

The report by the Media Institute of the Caribbean  (MIC) on Guyana’s Access to Information Act of 2011 underlines again the shortcomings of this piece of legislation which was meant to be a critical adjunct to transparency in government but which has barely functioned.

The Guyana Teachers’ Union strike which began on February 5th this year lasted for a month.

In its manifesto for the 2020 general elections, the PPP/C promised that between 2020 and 2025 it would create 50,000 jobs.

Earlier this week we reported that a Zoo Restoration and Enhancement Project had been launched by the Protected Areas Commission.

Anyone who had business at any of the post offices around the country today, Thursday, May 2, 2024, would have encountered them; throngs of pensioners trying to cash their National Insurance Scheme (NIS) and Old Age (OA) vouchers.

Last Thursday and Friday, the Caricom Regional Cricket Conference was held at the Hyatt Regency in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago.

Publicly, at least, the PPP/Civic administration is almost certainly not about to admit that its awarding of a multi-million dollar contract for the construction of a Primary School in a community which, as we understand it, is particularly in need of the facility to a team of ‘contractors’ known much more for their exploits in the entertainment industry than in the building sector was an unacceptable error in judgement.

An examination of the recent reports of the Public Procurement Commission (PPC) on complaints before it has underlined how easy it is for corruption to take over the tendering system and for unjust contract awards to be made to the detriment of public safety and the monies of the people of this country.

The epic of the Bamia Primary School contract rumbles on. The contract was awarded in November 2021 and was intended to run for twenty months, but its completion date has been postponed more times than anyone cares to remember.

Making a brief virtual intervention at the CARICOM Regional Cricket Conference in Trinidad and Tobago on Thursday and later in a detailed video presentation, President Irfaan Ali made the announcement that Guyana will be launching the World Premier League (WPL) which will promote West Indian cricket.

The scandals surrounding the award of the Tepui contract in particular, but other contracts too, raise serious questions about corruption under this administration.

One of the striking observations from the recent exposure of the assault on a Venezuelan schoolgirl by five of her peers is that the usual ad hocery, now a hallmark of this and other administrations, has obviously been employed with regard to the influx of foreign children to the country and in our schools.