Dear Editor,
Recent articles carried in the Stabroek News editions of the November 6 and 17 [sic], that sought to highlight the health situation and conditions in the Amer-indian Village of Tobago in the Maba-ruma Sub-Region of Region One do require a response from me, lest the selective picture of neglect painted by the writer of these hyperboles become entrenched in the minds of the unsuspecting and unaware among our Guyanese populace.
In the first place, Stabroek News seemed only interested in highlighting what it perceived as indicators of lack of progress and an embarrassment to our government. And in its anxiety and haste to publish its selective innuendoes and present its picture of despair, there was no time for verification of information with the relevant authorities at the regional or national level. Indeed, the author does not appear to have gone to the region with an enquiring and open mind to view and make objective assessment of development in the Tobago or any village. On the contrary, they went with a fixation and a preconceived notion that things were very much wrong in the village and would be highlighted.
Thus the Stabroek News writer could not see nor did he care to enquire or to know that
a) The villagers had not only eight 400 gallon water tanks, two of which were situated at the front of the village where the Stabroek News reporter visited, while the other six were situated in the heart of the village. In addition, the village gets water that is pumped every other day from the Wanaina system. Furthermore, the water flows through a standpipe at the entrance to the village and by means of service connections is taken to the village itself.
The reporter saw only what he wanted to see. He saw two water tanks only.
b) The Regional Democratic Council had rehabilitated and furnished the village community centre and classes accommodating 59 pupils were being conducted in the building since January 2010 by a staff of three teachers. In addition, the school kitchen for the Hot Meal Project has been completed and the hot meal programme will commence shortly.
c) Contrary to the inaccurate and reckless reports carried by Stabroek News of “almost all of the 32 households in the community had someone being treated for TB,”only four cases of TB were presently being treated in the village by a very pro-active medical team. In fact, the frequency of medical outreaches to the village has increased. Residents who need to be treated at the Mabaruma Hospital are transported there via vehicle provided by the hospital or the Office of the Regional Chairman.
With the support of CIDA six VIP latrines are being constructed to complement those already there. No serious health issues have been reported by the Regional Health Department.
d) Officials from the Regional Demo-cratic Council have been visiting Tobago Village on a weekly basis to interact with its Toshao/ councillors /residents to view, inter alia, work in progress in respect of the village’s agriculture project and to provide support.
e) The village has acquired two outboard engines and a boat using its presidential grant, and these transportation facilities villagers use to assist them in their fishing, farming and crab-catching activities. The village has also acquired two chainsaws which it uses primarily to clear land for farming.
f) In addition, under the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs National Hinterland Secure Livelihood Programme, the construction of fish ponds for the rearing of tilapia and hassar, citrus cultivation and a thriving vegetable garden project have been introduced to support the village economy. Concomitant with the interventions just highlighted, the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs VSO staff in Maba-ruma which includes an agronomist and a food technologist have been working with women in the Tobago Village to build their capacity in food preparation, sanitation and hygiene.
It must also be noted that a quantity of farm tools, viz, hoes, shovels, cutlasses and files, watering cans and seeds have been provided for each household in the village, in addition to 64 hens and 10 roosters to support the school’s hot meal programme.
It cannot be denied that there is much more to be done to bring improvement to the lives of the residents of Tobago Village but it behoves any honest reporter to highlight the progress the village has been making even as you labour on the inadequacies. That is balanced reporting.
The Stabroek News reporter who dropped by the Tobago Village inexplicably did not notice, or else, did not care to note the developments I just described above. Otherwise, they did not consider them worthy of mention.
Equity and impartiality are a sine qua non of balanced reporting. It requires that progress or the absence thereof be examined not only in terms of achievements but also as a function of the depths from which we started to build. It necessitates also that developments be not clouded by perceptions of inadequacies.
The residents of Tobago Hill removed from Simatoo Creek in the Barima River in 2005 with the support of the Regional Democratic Council – which I headed at that time – the New Testament Church of God and Food for the Poor. It was a new beginning occasioned by the rising incidence of floods on their farm lands. The residents were now involved in hill farming as opposed to swamp farming. There was going to be a period of adjustment. Government support and that of NGOs such as Food for the Poor helped to facilitate this process. News media like Stabroek News can do well to accurately report these transitions and the attending developments.
Our government has been focusing with the support of the relevant sector ministries, the Regional Democratic Councils and the Village Councils in our ten administrative regions on those things that matter most for the development of our people, having regard to the fact that our country’s resources are limited relative to the demand for them and that there are competing uses for these resources – education, health care, transportation, roads, communication, water, agriculture. We focus on these socio-economic interventions that bring improvement to peoples’ lives. And that includes our Amerindian people in Tobago Village.
I challenge the Stabroek News to revisit the Tobago Village, observe and enquire and analyze objectively the developments that have taken place in that village over the past four years and report them.
Yours faithfully,
Norman Whittaker MP
Editor’s note
1. The second SN report on Tobago which was carried on November 13 and not November 17 as Mr Whittaker claims, was based on a press release issued by Gina containing statements by Minister in the Ministry of Health Dr Bheri Ramsaran on the health situation in the village. Among other things, he was reported as saying that his ministry had sent in teams to investigate the public health status of the community, while the Mabaruma Hospital had been instructed to increase the frequency of their outreaches there. The story also reported him as saying that the Ministry of Health would vigorously pursue all reports of TB no matter what their source.
2. Even if there are only four confirmed cases of tuberculosis in Tobago, that is still a matter of major concern in a village with a population of 167, and we are of the view that rather than play the issue down as Mr Whittaker is seeking to do, Dr Ramsaran’s approach is the correct one.
3. As we reported in our story of November 6, we made attempts over a period of two days to contact Regional Health Services (RHS) Director Dr Narine Singh for a response to our report on TB, but he was unavailable. Furthermore, persons at the RHS office told this newspaper that they were unaware of the situation. We were first alerted to the existence of possible tuberculosis cases in Tobago by the residents of neighbouring villages, who were anxious about it, and their accounts were confirmed by a health worker in the region, all of which we reported.
4. The report on Tobago of November 6 was not, as Mr Whittaker indicates above, a wide-ranging story about the village encompassing development issues and the like; it was specifically about reports of TB there, as the headline makes clear, viz, ‘North West District community fears spread of TB.’ We therefore did no investigation about outboard engines and the like, because they had no direct bearing on the subject at hand. For a more comprehensive report on a North West location (not Tobago), we refer Mr Whittaker to our feature on the Mabaruma Sub-Region, which was written by the same reporter (Mr Alva Solomon) and which we carried in our Sunday edition of November 17.
We did listen to Tobago residents on the subject of water and sanitation, since that did have direct bearing on health status, and we published what we were told, including the information about the number of water tanks. However, our reporter did himself observe faecal matter in the creek, which residents told us was used for cooking and washing.
