We should demand changes for UG

Dear Editor,

It is established that as the University of Guyana goes, so does the rest of Guyana.

It is time to start the process of change to turn Guyana around for the betterment of all of us.

To begin this process, it is absolute necessary to make the much needed and long overdue investments for current and future Guyanese students and society. There is an absolute need for all Guyanese to send a clear message to the political class which rules Guyana that the state of affairs at UG is detrimental to us and will not be tolerated in any form.

University of Guyana Student Society (UGSS) President, Mr J Griffith, and UG staff and workers represented by Mr Bruce Haynes and Dr M Ifill of the University of Guyana Workers Union (UGWU) and University of Guyana Senior Staff Association, UGSSA) respectively, need all the support they can get from the public and civil society in order to start the metamorphosis.

The political class did not and still does not care for the development of young Guyanese as can be seen from the abysmal state of the university. The PPP-controlled UG Council and its APNU representatives demoralize the university and force it further into a state that is already unimaginable.

Conditions have gotten worse and worse over the years with no facilities, so that its dysfunctional state has become a normal way of operation. The older generation in the form of the political class which rules UG, and its representatives on the UG Council want Guyanese to continue to think that it is all about ethnicity, to justify their control of the university and the suffocation of the younger Guyanese minds and the future of Guyana.

We have been down this road before and ethnicity has been used by the PPP-controlled UG Council and the dictatorial PPP to deny change to the present and the next generation. This scorched-earth policy has effectively shut down the battle for change.

It is time we discarded our parents and families’ (PPP and PNC) old but self-destructive politics. It has gotten us nowhere. It is stagnating and it is non-developmental. We are forced to flee this land of our ancestors.

Let us demand a change both for our own and for future generations. We should demand changes that will result in full capability and facilities for UG from the political classes. It is the inherited right of Guyanese to be properly educated and this has nothing to do with ethnicity. The time is now for us to take a stand.

Yours faithfully,

Anand Daljeet