Dear Editor,
Recently I have had cause to send the letter which follows to the Guyana Cricket Board and a representative of the Essequibo Cricket Board about the management of the Essequibo Under-15 cricket team. In preparation for the Under-15 participation in the current tournament the tardiness of the Guyana’s Cricket Board Secretariat was again manifested.
At the ninth hour parents were required to produce components of cricket gear, copies of passports and their permission to send their children to participate in the tournament.
In spite of the short notice and inconvenience to which parents were put, the critical incident on the morning of Wednesday, July 10, when a member of the Under-15 team who hails from the Corentyne could not fly out with the rest of the team because he did not have his passport to travel.
This cricketer’s father had been asked by someone at the Cricket Board to leave his son’s passport for a photocopy to be made, as there was a power outage at the time he was there.
This person had committed to giving the passport to the manager so that the young man could fly out with the rest of the team at 5.45 hours. The passport was not delivered to the manager and the young man only knew this when he was about to board the plane.
He was then taken out of the airport by the manager and told to find his way to the Guyana Cricket Board and ask for his passport. This young man had no money on him and did not know how to find his way to the Guyana Cricket Board’s Secretariat.
Other parents who had gone up to the airport to see their children off had to call his parents on the Corentyne to alert them to what had happened to their son. One Mr Peres then undertook to take the young man to the Cricket Board to retrieve his passport.
It was subsequently learnt that after searching for some time the passport was found at the Secretariat and a commitment was made to have the young man sent out to Jamaica on the earliest possible flight.
Yours faithfully,
Hubert C Roberts
