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Stop making politics out of real developmental issues

Jul 05, 2009 Letters

Dear Editor,
An article in the SN dated January 1, 2007 that was captioned “$100m annually for sports, art fund – Jagdeo” will no doubt raise eyes 2 ½ year after for its impact on today’s Guyana.
This article clear reveals the commitment made by President Jagdeo at that time when he said “from the 2007 budget onwards, $100M will be set aside annually for a sports and arts development fund.”
The President was insightful enough to describe his initiative as the largest sum ever earmarked in the country’s history to these areas and said he was sure it would provide a major impetus to the development of sports and kindle interest and standards in the arts.
He was quoted as saying “Sports and Arts have a tremendous potential for improving the image of the country, fostering social cohesion and keeping our young people meaningfully occupied”.
Now I suspect the Director of Sports and the Head of the Department of Culture at the Ministry of Youth, Sports & Culture are not aware of these noble ambition of the President and possible are working for another Government.

The youths of Guyana need to know what they have done with the money set aside by President Jagdeo.
These are the pertinent question for the powers that be in the Ministry:
1. Was the $100m set aside for the Department of Sports and Culture?
2. If it was set aside, where was it invested?
I call on the respective Sports Association, the Opposition; the PPP; GAWU and the RPA (they have critical mass support in Essequibo and Berbice; the Bauxite Unions (they have mass support in Linden); the Regions #2, #6 and #10 administrations to query where these funds are and what were they spent on?
These organisations must drill down and question the administration as to why the $300m (2007, 2008 & 2009) was neither spent on developing a velodrome, nor a synthetic track, nor any of the three sports complexes in Berbice, Essequibo and Linden.

The Director of Sports Mr. Neil Kumar, who pretends to be above scrutiny from the public, will have all the moments of fame from now onwards because he will be lectured into explaining “whey de money deh?”
When you hold public office, you earn your credibility by delivery, not excuses and that is all we have been having from the Director of Sports on these national projects – excuses after excuses. We continue to miss the opportunity to put President Jagdeo’s vision of fostering social cohesion into action, because a Department of the Government has not delivered on their contract with the people.

The Director of Sports and the Head of the Department of Culture has to stop making politics out of real developmental issues.
The performance of some of these Department Heads must come under greater scrutiny from the Ministers and Parliament in order to measure their ability to deliver since their poor performance are one of the principle causes why the youths of Guyana are leaving from the back, front and side doors and allow overseas politician like the Barbadian Health Minister to take his eyes and pass our people.
Sasenarine Singh

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