Dear Editor,
As usual when our country is facing a critical moment in its history, a moment that it will be judged by generations to come, we cannot find it in our hearts to unite. Even when our national pride is at stake, we find it a much better and I suppose easier choice to sit on the sidelines and criticize. Of course I am talking about Guyana’s role in the CWC and the challenges we are currently having getting the stadium ready.
Over the past 3 months I have been reading the dailies much more than usual to find positive information with regards to our readiness. Alas! Mostly nothing. That’s not totally unexpected however. But then I head over to TV and its worse!
But here’s my real beef. I can understand the private media houses not having an obligation to carry news stories that will necessarily praise the Government after all, the Government received much criticism for committing this country to a stadium, but what is NCN’s excuse?
NCN is the state media. It has a national mandate to highlight events of this nature, so where are the radio and television productions that are focused on world cup cricket. It is the biggest thing in the Caribbean and NCN does not have any sustained promotion of this historic event.
Listen to VOG’s Breakfast Show and even with two “experienced” announcers, there is hardly anything on cricket. Where the features, the quizzes, the issues in the news programmes? Where are the productions for cricket? Except for the promos on 98.1FM and some chatter from one of the announcers which often gets lost in his ranting about Guyanese music, there is nothing else!
NCN TV is much worse! The already boring programme line up is made even crasser with the early morning repeats of close up. Save for Edwin Seeraj’s cricket chats and quiz, there will be nothing.
With all the criticism in the press both locally and internationally, one would imagine that the state media would be championing our cause. There seems to be no effort by the state media to allay the fears of the hundreds of visitors who will be coming to this dear land of ours, many of them for the first time. Nothing to encourage all the people who have been working tirelessly in a mostly thankless job. Nothing to spread the national euphoria being enjoyed by the rest of the Caribbean.
To say that I am deeply disappointed and angry over NCN’s dismal display of creativity is an understatement. So I’ll say this, the President or the Head of GINA needs to deal condignly with the person or persons responsible for production at NCN. Especially if there was a presidential directive to have increased coverage of Guyana’s preparations for CWC (and I suspect there might have been). And the buck should start and stop at Martin Goolsarran. He’s in charge of production and he should be made to answer.
That said, I’d like to thank all the people who have been working to help make this moment that began with a dream, a reality.
Yours faithfully,
Alicia Marie Gonzalves
Editor’s note
We are sending a copy of this letter to Mr Goolsarran for any comments he may wish to make.
