Cabinet Secretary takes swipe at GHRA

Jan 31, 2009 News

The Guyana Human Rights Association will have to identify the source of its inaccurate information which was detailed in a release it issued recently, outlining how the Agriculture Ministry and other state entities were found wanting in their response to the flood situation.
This disclosure was made by Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon yesterday. Luncheon deflated the release in its entirety when he hosted his weekly press conference.
In the release, the human rights organisation noted that the manner in which D&I rehabilitation has been carried out since 2005 has generated frustration in affected communities.
It further outlined that contracts for local drainage improvements have been awarded to groups which possessed few qualifications for the work, and that many drainage and irrigation contracts awarded to community development committees, water users associations and farmers’ groups were poorly executed.
But, according to Dr Luncheon, “Reflective of the lack of serious and critical analysis of the facts surrounding the flood and responses by Central Government, the GHRA, in its lengthy diatribe of the management of the flood, has amazingly and incomprehensively issued inaccurate statements; issued distortions and contributed to a perception of their anti-government stance in public life.”
Dr Luncheon said that the GHRA was even inaccurate in its attempt to spell the name Major General Atherly in its release, adding that Major General Atherly was not appointed Director General of the CDC recently, but rather he was appointed to the National Security Secretariat as the Project Coordinator.
According to the Cabinet Secretary, the GHRA awareness was evidently limited when it referred to the NEOC as the National Emergency Organising Council. Luncheon explained that the term specifically refers to the National Emergency Operating Committee, which deals with operating a disaster response.
“They started out on their diatribe totally confused about what the NEOC meant and what it was all about. It went further in seeking to justify Oxfam’s duplicity…. Oxfam, of course, never ventured an opinion or made any disclosures to those members that they had their own private assessments, that its surface was being sent overseas and it was not intended for domestic consumption.”
Oxfam had also presented a negative report on the flood response, as seen by Central Government, but according to Dr Luncheon, the entity was of the opinion that there is an assessment appropriate for the locals and another for its principals.
“The fact that their (Oxfam) assessment was totally inaccurate and probably would have been totally rejected at the NEOC seems to have been lost on the GHRA,” Dr Luncheon said.
He stressed that the GHRA, without identifying how legitimate its sources were, made some of the most unacceptable statements about Government’s mandate, Government’s discharge of its mandate, and Government’s assessment, adding that it was a virtual attack about the management by Government agencies of the recent flooding on the coast.
For this reason, Dr Luncheon said, “The GHRA must identify who its sources were, and where they were able to obtain the information that was so grossly inaccurate that formed the basis of the release.”
Essentially, he noted, it is the contention of the administration that the GHRA has consolidated itself as an irresponsible and an unaccountable appendage of the non-governmental organisation system and movement in Guyana, with a propensity to engage in peddling known inaccuracies and contributing to its anti-government stance in the public domain.

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Cabinet Secretary takes swipe at GHRA

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