Category: Features

By Lakhram Bhagirat When life thought it had knocked Verna Hercules down, it was in for a surprise when like a phoenix she rose from the proverbial ashes and began soaring – not because she wanted to, but because she had no other choice since she is both mother and father to her four children. Verna tells me that she was born and raised in the riverine community of Ibini, Berbice River, but after she got married and had her four children, she moved upriver to the village of Kwakwani…

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“Poverty is hell and the angels are in paradise driving in their limousine where everything is nice and clean. A poor man living in a teeny weenie hut, children hungry with nothing in the pot. Gone by the neighbour to beg for some rice, the neighbour under pressure, boy, things ain’t nice…poverty is hell.” Those were the famous lyrics of legendary calypsonian Winston “Mighty Shadow” Bailey as he sought to address the hardships of poverty faced throughout the world. Like many musicians, he used his talents to address and raise…

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By Lakhram Bhagirat If we travel the length and breadth of this world, we will find women doing extraordinary things and quite often venturing into fields that are not traditionally considered appealing to a woman and one can say the same for Anasha Simmons, but according to her she loves what she does. Anasha is a 29-year-old mother of two, and she is very assertive in what she does. If you ever have the chance to visit the Kwakwani community in Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice), you will definitely come into…

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Though a report on the valuation of the assets of the Guyana Sugar Corporation (GuySuCo) has not yet been released, Government is optimistic that the divestment process can begin in a matter of months. In a sit down with the media after signing a loan agreement on Friday, Finance Minister Winston Jordan was asked for an update on the divestment process. In his response, he noted that Government is optimistic of starting in the first half of 2019, a fact expressed by President David Granger. “We expect by the first…

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Mole Day traces its origins to an article that appeared in The Science Teacher magazine in the early 1980s about a high school chemistry teacher’s reasons for celebrating the day. The idea for Mole Day took root and led to the formation of the National Mole Day Foundation, which was formed on May 15, 1991. A mole is the quantity of anything with the same number of atoms found in 12.000 grams of carbon-12, expressed as 6.02 x 1023, popularly known as Avogadro’s constant. The American Chemical Society plans National…

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By Lakhram Bhagirat If you met Royston Garnett a few years ago and told him that he would have been unemployed for 10- plus months and struggling to make ends meet, he would have certainly given you a few taps on your head to check to see if everything was in place, but today all he can do is worry about where the next dollar will come from, since he practically is as broke as a church mouse. I know a lot of you will say that ‘we all go…

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The old saying “put some aside for the rainy days” comes to mind when one thinks of the plight of retrenched sugar workers, since most of them are suffering because their “rainy days” cookie jar is empty. Among those are 54-year-old Mohamed Farook and 47-year-old Deonauth Bisnauth of Enmore, East Coast Demerara. Farook was employed at the Enmore Estate for 37 years as a cane transporter. His daily job entailed transporting cane from the fields to the factory in order for them to be processed. He, like many of his…

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– single mother shares her story By Lakhram Bhagirat One of the most painful decisions for parents is the dreaded one of parting with their children, but more often than we realise circumstances force parents to part with their children for various reasons, and Nakeshia Best is still coming to terms with that decision she was forced to make. The single mother from Skeldon, Berbice in Region Six (East Berbice-Corentyne) took the fateful decision to send two of her three children to live with their maternal grandmother after she could…

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Following the closure of four sugar factories last year, and the displacing of almost 5000 workers, the workers have been fighting for their jobs and severance packages. Last year, 1851 workers were sacked from the Skeldon Sugar Estate, 1181 from the Rose Hall Estate, 1480 from the East Demerara Sugar Estate and 251 from the Wales Sugar Estate. Just Friday we saw former Wales Estate workers protesting the National Assembly calling for their severance packages and the government also owes a number of other works the remaining 50 percent of…

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Guyana’s Minister of Public Health, Volda Lawrence calls herself a “cancer warrior” because she believes she has fought for her life and for the opportunity to live another day to inspire others. Minister Lawrence was diagnosed with Triple Negative Breast Cancer in January 2017. This diagnosis came at a time when she was settling into a new appointment, as a senior Public Health Minister. Partaking in a routine annual feature, the Minister took a pathology test for breast cancer cells; the results of which returned negative for estrogen receptors (ER-),…

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