(Stabroek News will occasionally publish comments from its website which may be of interest to readers.)

Andrew Marques- Fireman 456
Submitted on 2010/05/11 in response to the St Joseph Mercy Hospital fire

“Good morning my fellow Guyanese friends/family. This year I will have 30 years of being a firefighter having started my career with the Guyana Fire Service in 1979 before moving to the United States. However , today I am very sadden to see the damaged that a good servant, when uncontrolled has caused to a the St Joseph Hospital. As A kid in the early 1960s my memories of the hospital are being a patient and being treated by Dr.Fredricks, also being allowed to play with my toys outside the Children’s ward rolling the cars down the ramp leading to the area destroyed by the fire.

With that introduction I would like to view this fire from the side of the fire department. 1. In Georgetown the last time I was there only 5% of the 680 installed Fire Hydrants in the city are of any use and that’s if shelter belt can supply the water. 2. The Guyana Government and by extension The Minister of Home Affairs has over the past few years held photo ops at the national park to present a number of retired fire tenders which were bought from recyclers in London without any equipment on board. (this has fooled many of the bloggers on this site into believing that the Guyana Fire Service is equipped) The fire tenders that came to Guyana are in excess of 18 years old. 3. The government last week made a lot of noise about safety in the work-place, I therefore trust that the Minister of Home Affairs was able to see first hand how many firefighters showed up to that fire, (See photographs KN and SN) without any protective clothing No long boots, no helmets No breathing Apparatus sets etc, something that the newspapers did not report on. A word of caution to all who has attacked the fire department today, fighting fires is a science and is not about running with a bucket of water and throwing it on every fire. I am sure that as I sit here the Guyana Fire Service performed with admiration and a great sense of duty and pride in bring this fire under control and extinguishing the inferno.What I have written here, I hope will put things in the light and allow a more informed exposure, of the truth in which the Guyana Fire Service operate. I hope that your readers will also understand that in the case of a fire at a hospital their are pre-determined plans that were in place before the fire, that are going to be followed (eg)The crew of first arriving fire tender shall immediately commence rescue operations, the crew of second arriving fire tender shall also join the rescue operations if needed and the third arriving fire tender shall commence firefighting operations.The crews of subsequent arriving fire tenders, shall go into operation depending on the situation at hand and under the instruction of the officer in-charge of the scene.”

Jeremy Poynting
Submitted on 2010/04/30  in response to The Arts…Fiction, fantasy and the art of publishing

2 # (April 29 edition of the Guyana Review)
“I am absolutely certain that a valid and viable publishing house can be established in Guyana. The excellence of Ameena Gafoor’s The Arts Journal is more than enough evidence for that.

There are, though, real issues to confront: on the evidence of some of the manuscripts coming to Peepal Tree, there is undoubtedly talent around, but also too much evidence of writers who haven’t read widely enough and haven’t mastered some of the basics of their craft.

My feeling is that for sustainable success, equal focus needs giving to three things: to writer development, to reader development and to publishing development. Without the first two, the latter will struggle. Writer development (from enthusiasm and talent to professional skills) is one of the areas where young writers in the UK (and the USA and Canada) are, I suspect, at an advantage of younger writers in Guyana. Reader development is about taking access to books and the pleasure of reading outside the regular, smallish circle of educated, better-off Georgetown readers who support literary events. What Petamber Persaud has been doing is briliant, but it needs more support. Unless real investment is made in the library service and in reading for pleasure in schools, there will never be a big enough readership to sustain a market for locally published books.

I agree wholly that whatever expertise is available outside Guyana (and I’m only too willing to help!) the drive and direction should come from inside.

That means focusing on the skills of editors, copy-editors, proof-readers, book designers, book marketers — some the essentials of sustaining a publishing company — and developing them if necessary.

I’m sure too, that in the early stages, a Guyanese publishing company will need financial support and the government is probably the only realistic source of funds — President Jagdeo’s instinct to support such a venture is admirable — but I’d urge that there needs to be a real hands-off principle so that there is neither the scope for the suspicion of political interference and that the venture of supporting publishing has support across the political spectrum. Setting up a genuinely local and independent board (or, better still, having an independent funding apparatus to which independent publishers can apply) could be the way to go.

But if Peepal Tree can help, we’d love to.”