Editorial

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. 

The humbling of the Conservatives in the general election suggests how far Britain’s political landscape has shifted since the Brexit vote.

For several decades now, rice farming has been one of the mainstays of Guyana’s agricultural sector – a sector which accounts for an estimated 30% of all employment.

On Monday last around 6 pm accused offenders housed at the Juvenile Detention Centre in Sophia, Georgetown, somehow managed to set a mattress on fire, which resulted in minor injury—from smoke inhalation—to three inmates of the facility.

Last weekend, 3rd/4th June, the South American Under 20 Track and Field Champion-ships were hosted by Guyana at the National Track and Field Centre at Leonora, West Coast Demerara.

It would be churlish, to say the least, to deny the Occupational Safety and Health Unit (OSHU) of the Ministry of Social Protection whatever credit it might have earned for improving the quality of its service.

The arrests of 20 persons two weekends ago in the Region Eight village of  Chenapau and the subsequent decision not to have charges pursued against them exposes the clumsiness and disorder in the government, not dissimilar to what preceded it.

On Friday President David Granger rejected the Leader of the Opposition’s nominees for the post of Chairman of the Guyana Elections Commission (Gecom).

In the book Hot: Living Through the Next Fifty Years on Earth the environmentalist Mark Hertsgaard states that: “humanity has two options for containing temperature rise.

It would be safe to say, given the low population of Guyana, that domestic violence has become a major scourge of this nation, contributing, along with suicide and wanton criminality to a loss of ethos.