Dear Editor,
An article in the SN dated January 1, 2007 that was captioned ‘$100M annually for sports, arts fund – Jagdeo’ will no doubt raise eyebrows 2½ years later for its impact on today’s Guyana. This article clearly reveals the commitment made by President Jagdeo at that time when he said, “from the 2007 budget onwards, $100M will be set aside annually for a sports and arts development fund.” The President was insightful enough to describe his initiative as the largest sum ever earmarked in the country’s history to these areas and said he was sure it would provide a major impetus to the development of sports and kindle interest and standards in the arts. He was quoted as saying “Sports and Arts have a tremendous potential for improving the image of the country, fostering social cohesion and keeping our young people meaningfully occupied.”
Now I suspect the Director of Sport and the head of the Department of Culture at the Ministry of Youth, Sport and Culture may not be aware of these noble ambitions of the President. Was the $100M set aside for the Departments of Sport and Culture, and if it was, in what was it invested?
I call on the respective sport associations, the opposition, the PPP, GAWU and the RPA (they have critical mass support in Essequibo and Berbice), the bauxite unions (they have mass support in Linden), Regional administrations 2, 6 and 10 to ask where these funds are and what they were spent on. These organisations must drill down and question the administration as to why the $300M (2007, 2008 and 2009) was neither spent on developing a velodrome, nor a synthetic track, nor any of the three sports complexes in Berbice, Essequibo and Linden. When you hold public office, you earn credibility by delivery, not excuses, and excuses are all we have been having from the Director of Sport on these national projects. We continue to miss the opportunity to put President Jagdeo’s vision of fostering social cohesion into action because a department of the government has not delivered on their contract with the people. The Director of Sport and the Head of the Department of Culture have to stop making politics out of real developmental issues. The performance of some department heads must come under greater scrutiny from ministers and parliament in order to measure their ability to deliver since their poor performance is one of the principal causes why the youths of Guyana are leaving from the back, front and side doors and allowing overseas politicians like the Barbadian Health Minister to take his eyes and pass our people.
Yours faithfully,
Sasenarine Singh
