Editorial

When governments become enraptured with the scale of monies flowing into their economies they lose interest in any real regulation or oversight that might constrict the bonanza.

On February 17 Guyana was suspended from the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, usually referred to by its initials of EITI.

In its 2022 Labour Review, published at the beginning of February this year, the Inter-national Labour Organisation (ILO) revealed that the average unemployment rate for Latin America and the Caribbean (the region in which Guyana falls) was 7.2 percent.

Older folk perusing the  Business Section (Yellow Pages) of a 1970’s copy of a directory of the former Guyana Telecommunication Corpora-tion (GTC) would probably commence reminiscing about businesses of yore.

The Ministry of Education’s Friday February 17 memorandum addressing the subject of “some schools conducting educational tours to locations/places that do not contribute to better student outcomes,” attracts attention if only because, whatever the Ministry’s concern in the matter at hand, the manner in which it expresses itself suggests that it has no interest whatsoever in disclosing the specifics on the incident that gave rise to the missive, in the first place.

On Friday, the Ministry of Housing and Water signed a mind-boggling $56.8b worth of infrastructural development works with contractors across the country.

The failure of the Public Accounts Committee of Parliament to meet on a regular basis should be a matter of serious concern to citizens.

In November 2022 software developer OpenAI launched a new version of its chatbot, ChatGPT which responds to questions on almost any topic under the sun.

Exactly a year ago today Russian tanks rolled across the border into Ukraine in an attempt to reshape the canvas of Europe.

World Day of Social Justice was observed on Monday, February 20, the 15th such annual observance since the International Labour Organisation (ILO) unanimously adopted its Declaration on Social Justice for a Fair Globalisation and the UN General Assembly issued a declaration making the commemoration official.

On 10th February, at the National Cultural Centre, the Guyana Prize for Literature was presented at the Awards Ceremony, the marquee event of the Guyana Prize for Literature Literary Festival 2023.

The successive  oil and gas fora that have been staged in Guyana have had the effect of attracting a level of international attention to the country that complements the high global profile which the country had incrementally accumulated in the wake of ExxonMobil’s 2015 announcement of its first major oil find offshore Guyana.

It is completely unsurprising that ExxonMobil continues to fend off widespread calls for it to enter a renegotiation of the 2016 Product Sharing Agreement (PSA) with the Government of Guyana to enable the people of this country to have a greater share of the wealth derived from their natural resources.

There are not that many constitutions across the globe which haven’t been subject to tinkering.

Perhaps each year we should have a week off from talking about oil.

Recalling comparisons with Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand, Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon on Wednesday resigned from her post and said she would stand down as leader of the Scottish National Party.

The embankment along Lamaha Street, part of what used to be the East Coast Railway, has been rebooted as the ‘Lamaha corridor’.

On the 29th January,  the National Sports Awards ceremony was held at the National Cul-tural Centre.

The societal standing, which, historically, our teachers and the teaching profession, as a whole, have enjoyed, historically, has always been informed, much more, by the popular regard from which teaching, as a profession has benefitted, as a noble pursuit, than by the material returns enjoyed by our deliverers of education.

Two days after the February 6th editorial in this newspaper lamenting the lack of action by the authorities on addressing the proceeds of crime and money laundering, arrests were made at the CJIA, Timehri.