Editorial

The desire for progress is something intrinsic to human beings, both at the individual level and collectively speaking.

There are several disturbing things that the current rainy season has forced into the spotlight.

Last Thursday, cricket fans around the world welcomed Ireland and Afghanistan as the eleventh and twelfth members of Test cricket’s exclusive fraternity.

What we are told is the President’s confidence in her notwithstanding, a healthy measure of public scepticism has attended the appointment of Ms Nicolette Henry to the education portfolio.

Flooding and the risk of flooding have become ingrained in the collective psyche of Guyanese in the aftermath of the 2005 Great Flood and subsequent inundations of varied magnitude and length.

Last Wednesday Stabroek News reported on the Preliminary Report into the Education Sector of Guyana, which was handed over to the Ministry of the Presidency by the Ministry of Education earlier this month.

Institutional failures have become the scapegoats of our age. We blame juries for failing to convict policemen who shoot men during traffic stops; we blame management agencies for not protecting tower blocks from fire, we blame governments for fighting terrorism ineptly.

In his 2017 budget speech Finance Minister Winston Jordan assured the nation that government would be prioritising mental health and also training more professionals in this area.

As this newspaper reported on Tuesday, the Ministry of Public Infrastructure, following consultation with the Guyana Police Force Traffic Department, recently installed 33 more speed humps on several minor streets around the city as a means of curbing speeding and reducing the high incidence of vehicular crashes, which often result in serious injury or death.

Koninklijke Luchtvaart Maatschappij (Royal Aviation Society), better known to the world as the Royal Dutch Airlines, or simply KLM, is the official flag carrier airline of the Netherlands. 

Long before last week’s announcement that Dr Rupert Roopnaraine was being removed from his portfolio, it had already been clear that our education system was underperforming seriously and that it would not have been possible, whoever had been chosen to replace him, to significantly improve the situation in the short or even the medium term.

When the government made the earth-shattering announcement on January 18, 2016, that cane operations at the Wales estate would end on December 31, 2016 it sugar-coated the announcement with a number of promises to  find gainful employment for the hundreds who would have to be retrenched and to extend a lifeline to the community which faced grave jeopardy.

On Monday, June 13, the WPA learned of President David Granger’s intention to terminate Dr Rupert Roopnaraine’s tenure as Minister of Education, and to move him to the Department of Public Service within the Ministry of the Presidency.

Reports that Russia may have killed Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi have raised hopes that the Islamic State is finally unravelling.

When Nurse Sherlyn Marks dropped a bombshell exposé to the media revealing that Region 5 Councillor Carol Joseph was involved in using the leverage of her office to gain access to prescription drugs, this led to the uncharacteristically (for Guyana) sudden resignation of Councillor Joseph not only from the Regional Administration but from the People’s National Congress Reform as well.

At a sitting of the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Monday last, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Education Vibert Welch put a spoke in the wheel of Regional Executive Officer (REO) of Region Five Ovid Morrison, when he told the Members of Parliament who make up the committee that the Education Ministry does not have a policy to withhold salaries from teachers who travel overseas.

On Sunday Spain’s Rafael ‘Rafa’ Nadal won the French Open tennis tournament beating the Swiss Stan Wawrinka 6-2, 6-3, 6-1, and in doing so, became the first player in the modern era (which began with the 1968 French Open) to win one Grand Slam singles event ten times – ‘La Decima.’

The entire Guyanese track and field team and particularly those who medalled at the recently concluded South American Under-Twenty Athletics Meet at the National Track and Field Centre at Leonora deserves the fulsome congratulations of the nation.

As the absurdities of the Trump administration unfold with disturbing regularity, it will take principled voices all over to roll back the damage being wrought across many fronts and in many forms not even yet realised.

The British people spoke on Thursday. Except that they weren’t all speaking about the same thing.