Teachers and students leave because they see no development taking place

Feb 27, 2011 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Perhaps, Dr. Roger Luncheon and the people at the Office of the President (OP) do not think and believe that the youth, more specifically the next and younger generation do not see the regular wholesale debaucheries that have taken place in corridors of power of Guyana.
Most Guyanese youth, by the time they are in their teenage years realise that there is nothing being developed. Sure enough some infrastructure has been built with International Money (Funds), but basically there has been no development and most of the core industries like sugar and bauxite have regressed beyond belief.
Fortunately most youths and the next generation have an escape route, but it lies away from their homeland. Had it not been for this escape route from Guyana, these youth might have revolted like the Tunisian and Egyptian youths out of sheer desperation and frustration
During my teaching at UG, separate years of fourth year students at UG were asking: What is going on in Guyana? Why nothing is being developed in Guyana? Why are they not equipping UG so that we can have the means to develop Guyana? Will Guyana ever get better?
No one can lie to the younger generation because they have already assessed that there is no development and their windows of opportunity and efforts to do good for themselves and Guyana will be lost if they do not leave their beloved homeland.
Why is this so? If political forces fail to plan to develop then we will not develop. If they plan not to engage our youths in the developmental process then there will be no development. The human resources (that is youth and younger generation) are the precious gold reserves of any country and if there is no plan to harness and engage the youthful human resources then the greatest prospect for any country (Guyana) will suffer. It is simple as that.
The PPP government under President Jagdeo is a political dictatorship that wields and controls all the strings of economic power within its grasp.
It wants dictatorial political power which is detrimental to building the bases for economic development.
The UG council is filled with political PPP cronies. The GuySuCo board is made of PPP appointees.
Worst yet GAWU because of its close alliance to the PPP and President Jagdeo has stifled independent thinking to say or demand that there is no need for PPP political appointees to GuySuCo board, and that there is a great demand for technical people with the skills to plan ahead and look at evolving markets within their scope. GAWU played the PPP game.
Their top union members benefited from the close alliance with the PPP. Now the working people will have to pay for the costly mistakes of the PPP and its class of hangers-on have made.
UG and IAST remain the keys to the developmental process. As long as UG stays in the hand of the political forces of the PPP and PNC, we the Guyanese society are not going anywhere, we will remain in the state of backwardness.
We are clearly not engaging youths with any prospect of a future. They are not provided with the tools of Science and engineering to develop.
In fact, the longer the PPP holds its grip on UG, our development and dissension are being accelerated. We will continue to lose generations of Guyanese.
No youth coming through UG thinks that Guyana is on a developmental course. There will be few teachers who want to remain with the Ministry of Education which is still unwilling to make higher education a priority.
Mathematics and Science students, who have been through UG, know the limited possibilities and decreasing resources in Science and Technology will not want to remain.
There is no way you can tell a UG science fourth year student that, “we have no equipment to run a proper watered down — basic project,” that only theory will do, and the results do not matter due to intermittent equipment (best scenario) and expect that they will want to remain here. Better job prospects will always be elsewhere.
The fact each generation going through the system will have their first-hand encounters as students at UG, second-hand encounters at IAST and third-hand encounters at GuySuCo (and bauxite) or another company (with similar scenario) send clear signals that nothing is being developed.
No development means they are not seeing any future potential jobs. Worst yet the treatment and standard of living of teachers are unbelievable low to afford a family when compared to the rest of the Caribbean countries. Even VSO who volunteered their service find it hard to fathom the ploys of the Ministry of Education and the Government of Guyana.
Science and Mathematics graduates and teachers are not being encouraged to stay as they are seeking opportunities to survive and better themselves which are not possible in current economic climate of Guyana.
The solution is to first remove the elected dictatorship, invest in higher education which includes science, technology, engineering and teachers, and make higher education a priority. This is an investment for each generation and the way forward will be in the form of jobs, opportunity, and entitlement to build Guyana.
But Dr Luncheon and cohorts at the Office of the President continue to think that the amount of deceptions and controversies that have engrossed the Office of the President are unnoticed by the youths of Guyana.
But our youths continue to catalogue and correlate, corroborate OP illegal maneuvers and controversies and see no hope of development in Guyana’s development. The young people continue to leave prolonging the sadness and madness of Guyana.
Anand Daljeet

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