Editorial

Financial capitalism is inherently unstable: busts follow booms as investors take bigger risks in search of greater returns before the whole house of cards comes crashing down.

On Sunday we reported on an open letter sent to President Irfaan Ali by Environment and Democracy activist Simone Mangal-Joly, where she criticized the recent appointees to the Environmental Assessment Board. 

In January this year, when Minister of Public Works Deodat Indar announced the award of $792 million and $865 million in contracts to build roads in Wakenaam and Leguan respectively, he revealed the specifications, which were that they would be constructed of rigid pavement concrete.

In a few short months, another group of our students will be graduating from high school and contemplating stepping into the world of work, or heading straight to a tertiary institution for continuing education or skills training.

What one had hoped might have been a comprehensive update on the pace of progress towards the completion of the eagerly awaited Regional Food Terminal coinciding with last month’s 2023 Barbados Agro Fest event, did not materialize.

On January 10th this year, in some of the bluntest language that she had delivered on the subject, the Chancellor of the Judiciary (ag) Yonette Cummings-Edwards  made a stirring plea for the urgent reconstituting of the Judicial Service Commission (JSC) and the appointment of the required number of judges.

For those without access to social media the statement issued by Brigadier Godfrey Bess on Friday must have been something of a puzzle, since no full context for it was given.

One of the distillates of the brouhaha over Guyana’s suspension from the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) is the question of the alleged four-month absence of National Coordinator Dr Prem Misir of the Guyana-EITI from his desk.

Last Friday Police Commissioner (ag) Clifton Hicken summoned his senior regional Traffic Officers to Eve Leary for a meeting.

When Guyana joined the rest of the world in commemorating International Women’s Day (IWD) yesterday, there was cause for celebration, but also cause for mourning.

If you are beginning to imagine that you are witnessing a live version of the 2006 film ‘The Prestige’ unfold in front of you here in Guyana you should not worry.

Speaking at the opening of the 32nd meeting of the CARICOM Council for Trade and Economic Development (COTED) on September 18, 2009, former long-serving Secretary General, Edwin Carrington acknowledged that despite numerous policies, initiatives and strategies, the integration movement had not been able to effectively transform its ideas and plans for agriculture into an “acceptable reality”.

A few years have now elapsed since cricket fans in the region have ceased to descend into abysses of moaning and groaning each time that ‘our boys’ have sunk into the doldrums of one of those familiar defeats. 

At the end of last month a Brazilian helicopter pilot and a labourer were charged with various offences including disembarking without the consent of an Immigration Officer and breaches of the Civil Aviation Act.

When governments become enraptured with the scale of monies flowing into their economies they lose interest in any real regulation or oversight that might constrict the bonanza.

On February 17 Guyana was suspended from the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative, usually referred to by its initials of EITI.

In its 2022 Labour Review, published at the beginning of February this year, the Inter-national Labour Organisation (ILO) revealed that the average unemployment rate for Latin America and the Caribbean (the region in which Guyana falls) was 7.2 percent.

Older folk perusing the  Business Section (Yellow Pages) of a 1970’s copy of a directory of the former Guyana Telecommunication Corpora-tion (GTC) would probably commence reminiscing about businesses of yore.

The Ministry of Education’s Friday February 17 memorandum addressing the subject of “some schools conducting educational tours to locations/places that do not contribute to better student outcomes,” attracts attention if only because, whatever the Ministry’s concern in the matter at hand, the manner in which it expresses itself suggests that it has no interest whatsoever in disclosing the specifics on the incident that gave rise to the missive, in the first place.

On Friday, the Ministry of Housing and Water signed a mind-boggling $56.8b worth of infrastructural development works with contractors across the country.