Latest update January 3rd, 2025 4:13 AM
Jun 27, 2011 News
– AFC
The Alliance for Change has charged that President Jagdeo’s remarks towards President of the Guyana and General Workers Union, Komal Chand, at the Enmore Martyrs memorial ceremony were unbecoming and ‘harebrained’.
The AFC’s comment came during its weekly media briefing last Wednesday when the party also challenged statements by the Amerindian Affairs Minister, and spoke about a gag order placed on senior police officers.
“The comments made in this latest unwarranted attack on Mr Komal Chand reveals a serious and profound intellectual shortcoming with regard to the lessons and dictates of our nation’s history,” said AFC Member of Parliament and Prime Ministerial Candidate for the 2011 elections, Sheila Holder.
Reading a party statement, she quoted Mr Jagdeo being reported in other sections of the media as saying at the memorial event that the occasion should not be used as a grievance forum because it dishonours memories of the martyrs.
The president’s remarks appeared to be directed at Mr Chand who had earlier spoken at that event about issues negatively affecting sugar workers now.
“Such a forum constitutes perhaps the most suitable venue for a ventilation of the fundamental grievances affecting the lot of the sugar worker,” Mrs Holder said.
Mr Jagdeo reportedly said that management of the government owned Guysuco is not comparable to the plantocracy of the colonial era.
But explaining that a by-product of the ideology of the plantocracy was its aggrandizement, Mrs Holder countered that the current State apparatus is committed to this type of self-enrichment. “Such can be evidenced by Jagdeo’s Cadillac retirement package in the face of the sugar workers’ donkey cart wages. Thus in this way, the current State apparatus can be deemed similar to the plantocracy.”
The AFC also expressed alarm at media-reported comments by Minister of Amerindian Affairs, Pauline Sukhai, on health issues affecting interior residents, education and land demarcation and infrastructure.
Arguing that it is government’s responsibility and not a courtesy to provide health care for all its people, the AFC executive member described health care in the hinterland as failures.
“While there are hospitals at Kamarang, Upper Mazaruni, Region Seven and Santa Rosa, Moruca, North West, Region One, adequate staffing, drugs and other facilities are found wanting,” said AFC Executive Member and Hinterland Coordinator, Martin Cheong, adding that patients within the vicinity of these hospitals still have to be referred for treatment in Georgetown, with some dying before arrival in the city.
“The AFC will be the first to agree that many indigenous communities have new schools, but will hasten to add that schools without properly trained teachers, adequate furniture and facilities do not deliver the desired quality of education,” he said.
Mr Cheong cited as an example, students standing while being taught in the classroom because there was no furniture for sitting.
He noted that there are many schools with dormitories in some communities, “… but a check on the student dorms at Paramakatoi revealed that they can be compared with that of the cells at the Brickdam lock-ups…The dorms in Waramadong, Region Seven, are no different”.
As regards interior land demarcation, Mr Cheong claimed that many communities have been coerced into accepting set boundaries. “Some community members have complained to the AFC that Toshaos (community leaders) who are supporters of the government accept demarcation without the communities’ consent.”
And the AFC believes that the Guyana Police Force does not want to disclose information to the public, and for this reason a gag order has been placed on its divisional commanders.
“Only those who have something to hide behave in that clandestine manner,” said Party Leader Raphael Trotman in reference to a ban by Police Commissioner, Henry Greene, on divisional commanders from speaking to the media.
Noting that past police commissioners held regular media briefings, Mr Trotman said, “You are [now] more likely to know what is happening with the police force in Thailand than in Guyana”.
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