Category: Letters

Dear Editor, When I read this headline, “Sometimes my children wake up hungry and all I can do is cry”, I could not believe what this Coalition Government has done to the lives of the hardworking sugar workers of this country. How can our President and his plethora of hardly-working ministers digest their 50 per cent salary increases? How can they still regurgitate the worthless ‘good life’ mantra, which now represents an insult to anyone with an iota of intelligence or reasoning? In 2015, both the President and the Prime…

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Dear Editor, At a press conference held on Friday, October 5, 2018, Guyana Elections Commission Chairman, Justice (Ret’d) James Patterson, seems to have adopted the tactic of making unsubstantiated charges about “racial conflict” and efforts to stymie the holding of Local Government Elections (LGE) at the level of the Commission itself and external to it. It is indeed regrettable that the Elections Commission Chairman would go public to try to deflect and obfuscate the justifiable criticisms of GECOM. Article 162 of the Constitution mandates GECOM to always act fairly and…

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Dear Editor, In relation to matters of expenditure of the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) — and in particular the queries regarding voters’ education activities, which are woefully inadequate — a proposal should have been submitted to GECOM for approval. Further, the CEO, Mr. Lowenfield, MUST be able to provide timely information in respect to the execution of tenders and who were the evaluators. He should also provide copies of the evaluation report, substantiate the position of the National Procurement & Tender Administration Board (NPTAB) or Cabinet, and state whether mobilisation…

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Dear Editor, During the summer that just ended, Guyanese-Americans organised community events specifically designed to reunite kinfolks from a particular village and surrounding area in Guyana. These have be-come annual rituals that constitute a remembrance and celebration of life in that village and of the presence and achievements of those villagers and their descendants settled in America. Recreating ties among those spread across different areas in America, transmitting kin-based connections to off-spring, is one of the objectives behind these joyous village reunions. Over the last two decades, Indo-Guyanese village and…

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Dear Editor, Now that the PNC have had a chance to declare their results from their Congress, the confirmed re-sults were astonishing. Astonishing for the fact that the PNC, although they are in Government, they have done very little political work to expand their political base. Being in Government should have caused an influx of youths, women and non-traditional supporters (East Indians and Amerindians) into their Central Executive Committee (CEC), because a governing par-ty is expected to have more support compared to when it was an opposition party. But when…

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Dear Editor, Electoral fraud is the illegal interference with the process of an election. It can occur at any stage of the electoral cycle, sometimes even in the pre-electoral stages, where some Governments interfere with the planning process of the elections. In a narrow election, a small amount of fraud may be enough to change the election results. Even if the outcome is not affected, the revelation of fraud can have a damaging effect if not punished, as it can reduce voters’ confidence in democracy. At a recent press conference,…

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Dear Editor, The public health system has been plagued with a plethora of problems, ranging from shortages of drugs and medical supplies to prolonged waiting time for patients at outpatient and even emergency departments. Very often, patients’ frustration, disappointment and anger are usually directed at the doctors and nursing staff, many of whom are not responsible for the mismanagement that occurs on a daily basis. The doctors themselves are frustrated with the system, and have made known their concerns about drug shortages, equipment failure, and inadequate and untimely laboratory results…

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Dear Editor, It is awful to see, on a daily basis, the vicious assault on sugar workers. This assault started almost immediately after the May 2015 elections. APNU/AFC promised “change”, and among the changes they promised was that greater security and respect would be extended to sugar workers, including an annual 20 percent increase in wages and benefits. Some sugar workers, though skeptical, placed their destiny in Moses Nagamootoo, Ramjattan, and others in Region Six and Five, and provided some of the critical votes that APNU/AFC needed to take over…

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Dear Editor, According to a recent letter in the local media, “people of questionable character are forming NGOs and going around the world under false pretence, professing to be doing all kinds of good service in Guyana when in reality no one in Guyana is benefiting from these entities”. In some cases, they have never been heard of here. Many of these institutions are collecting millions of dollars from members, donors, foreign and local governments, but there is no accounting of how this money is being spent. Many NGOs in…

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Dear Editor, The record-breaking use of expletives by Attorney-at-Law Ryan Crawford should not be the main focus on the incident which took place on the ECD Public Road, and so detract from the casus belli which provoked the outburst. It is interesting to read of a similar incident which is related by another Attorney-at-Law and a sitting Member of Parliament, Mr Charrandass Persaud. In a letter to the media, he said, “On Friday, August 24, 2018, about 8.50pm, I was stopped at Vigilance at a “roadblock”. No ‘goodnight’, no ‘please’…

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