Oluatoyin Alleyne

A home in the small community of Hauraruni on the Linden-Soesdyke Highway provides a sanctuary for abused and abandoned young girls, and while reintegration with their families is the key aim some are allowed to remain after the stipulated 18 years if they have nowhere else to call home.

Team Guyana, which reported to the United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) last week in New York, was unhappy at the manner in which questions were posed by committee members and their reliance on “alternative sources” and the country will shortly lodge an official complaint.

The gold price has soared over the years and as a consequence mining contributes a huge chunk to the country’s economy, yet it remains one of the most vulnerable sectors as not a week goes by without a miner being murdered or dying in an accident.

Hours after she learnt that a young man she trusted but who sexually assaulted her had been jailed, a 23-year-old United King-dom woman was still in a state of disbelief because of the manner in which the Anna Regina police had blamed her instead of acknowledging she was the victim.

Six years after she had the horrific experience of being doused with a corrosive substance that has left her facially disfigured, 31-year-old Jo-Ann Lynch may soon get justice as the woman behind the attack is believed to have been nabbed in neighbouring Trinidad.

Easter Monday last year was a day that changed 31-year-old Niveta Deen’s life when a family outing at a creek on the Linden-Soesdyke Highway turned ugly when she was hit by a car as she attempted to cross the road.

Less than a year ago thirty-six-year-old Andrea Murray was dumped by the father of her two youngest children via a phone call, and with a view to making herself financially independent she decided to travel into the interior to work as a cook.

A multi-sectoral ap-proach is needed if Guyana is to effectively address the frightening rise in domestic violence, according to sociologist and University of Guyana (UG) lecturer Andrew Hicks, who said there is a role for educators, government, police, prison, courts, churches and the community at large in this important fight.

The board of the National Communications Network (NCN) has launched an investigation into suspected financial irregularities at the network and the company’s programme manager, Martin Goolsarran has been sent on administrative leave in relation to a $3.9M cheque made payable to him by a major advertiser.

Speaker of the National Assembly Raphael Trotman yesterday criticised the PPP/C administration’s move to the High Court over the opposition budget cuts, warning that the continued resort to legal action over parliamentary decisions signals the danger of a constitutional crisis of unimagined proportions.

The Donald Ramotar administration yesterday moved to the court to challenge the recent cuts made to the national budget, arguing that the opposition-controlled National Assembly had no power to reduce or set public spending.

The last time Indira Singh was seen alive was one week before her decomposing body was found in the dilapidated house she shared with her teenaged mentally challenged daughter located at Post Office Street, Vergenoegen, East Bank Essequibo.

Every day 42-year-old Padmawattie Faikall with her five-year-old son in tow heads to the Anna Regina car park where they stand in the rain or the blazing sun begging for most of the day before returning home to count the day’s ‘earnings’.

US county judge in Tallahassee, Florida, Judith Hawkins, had many firsts when she became a judge in 1996 as she was the first African-American in the Second Judicial Circuit elected in a contested election, the first African-American county judge and the first African-American female county judge.

Psychologist Dr Faith Harding has expressed grave concern over the number of suicides and attempted suicides among young people, and she has attributed the problem partly to them living life too quickly and becoming bored by the time they are in their late teens.

Former central executive member of the PNCR Dr Faith Harding has been moving ahead with her Quick Impact Programme (QIP) and one of her major programmes is already under way with the planting of many acres of sorrel at Long Creek which is expected to be exported when reaped.

Twenty-four-year-old Susanna Jamal is a young woman full of life who is never lost for an encouraging word for others, even though the experiences of her own life would have caused the fittest of stalwarts to falter.

President of the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association (GGDMA) Patrick Harding has pledged his association will work along with the Guyana Women Miners Organisation (GWMO) to combat trafficking in persons.

A teacher for 24 years, new A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) parliamentarian John Adams, hopes that by the end of the next five years teachers and students of the Vreed-en-Hoop Secondary School will no longer have to be away from school for about four days every time there is a high tide.

Many years ago avid book collector and Emeritus Professor of Africana studies Tony Martin picked up a book by George F Warner cheaply as it was at the end of its print run, but it took him years to discover that the book contained what he now describes as “startling pieces of new information,” one being that the first East Indian immigrant came to the Caribbean in 1595, not  1838.