Dear Editor,
I am a teacher at Hope Secondary School, formerly Swami Purnananda Secondary School at Hope, East Coast Demerara.
On June 21, 2010, our school received English and Mathematics textbooks from the Ministry of Education.
I asked students to fetch these books to the school’s library and while this was being done, students brought copies of the books to me and pointed out that some of them were photocopied.
When I further examined the books, I discovered that the photocopied books were not stamped with the Ministry of Education stamp although the original textbooks were stamped. I was deeply troubled by this strange occurrence and the following questions raced through my mind:
(i) Why did the Ministry of Education not stamp the photocopied books?
(ii) How will the ministry be able to account for these textbooks if they are not stamped?
(iii) How can the Ministry of Education break copyright laws and encourage our children to steal the ideas of others?
Editor, I am in the process of writing my own mathematics and physics textbooks, and I will run from this country and go and live in little Barbados or some other country if my books are pirated in such a blatant and disrespectful manner.
This country is in dire need of copyright laws to stop the brain-drain of tens of thousands of gifted individuals with beautiful ideas who could make Guyana a better place.
Yours faithfully,
Mark Nigel James
Head of Department (Science)
Editor’s note
We are sending a copy of this letter to Mr Pulandar Kandhi, Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Education for any comment he might wish to make.
