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Jul 15, 2015 Letters

Dear Editor,
Recently Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan, announced that all bars, night clubs and entertainment places will be required to comply with the law and close their doors by 2:00 a.m. Some are in support of this decision. Others are not.
Views have been publicly expressed on call-in radio and TV programmes. Many letter writers have voiced their opinions in our daily newspapers. Kaieteur News carried a letter titled “Closing bars and night clubs at 2:00 a.m. will do more harm than good”. Stabroek News carried a letter titled “Every civilized society has laws regulating the hours for the sale of alcohol”.  What should be the wisest way forward?
Apart from curbing crime and disorder in our streets and communities in the wee hours of the morning let us consider three other important practical issues surrounding this ministerial decision.
The first issue is the amount a sleep an adult person nightly needs. Most medical authorities believe that this should be between seven and nine hours.   Dr. Sudhansu Chokroverty MD, professor and co-chair of the New Jersey Neuroscience Institute says “An average adult needs 7.5 – 8 hours sleep per night. But there are many people who can function with 6 hours of sleep, and there are also some who need 9 hours or more”.
Medical research has shown that even minimal sleep loss over an extended period takes a toll on our mood, energy and ability to handle stress. We also have to deal with memory problems, depression and the weakening of our immune system. The quality of our sleep directly affects the quality of our waking life, our mental sharpness, productivity, emotional balance, creativity as well as our physical vitality.
We need to accept that sleep isn’t a time when our body and brain just shut down. Rather when we sleep our brain stays very busy. It oversees a wide variety of biological maintenance that prepares us for the next day. Simply stated enough hours of restorative sleep enables us to work, learn, create and communicate at a much higher level as compared to someone who has slept for just 3-4 hours because they had been up to 2:00 a.m. at a bar.
The second issue is the long term effects of excessive alcohol consumption. When we spend long hours at a bar most likely we will consume an amount of alcohol harmful to our health. Alcohol dependence is associated with hypertension, coronary heart disease, stroke, cancer of the respiratory and digestive system, and also cancer of the liver, breasts and ovaries.
When we go heavy on alcohol we suffer from such psychiatric disorders as depression, hypomania (craze) and panic, personality and anxiety disorders. We face such neurological problems as impairment of memory and emotions, brain damage and problems with our gait and balance.
All Guyanese should be interested in a strong and vigorous nation as opposed an unhealthy one. Therefore we urge our Guyanese brothers and sisters to lead a life of restraint when it comes to drinking and partying until the wee hours of the morning.
The third issue has to do with effective time management. Sometimes we need to be reminded that our earthly life is but a measurement of time – from the time of our birth to the time of our death. If we are to be resourceful to ourselves, our families and to our country we must daily employ effective time management.
We must consciously control the amount of time spent on specific activities. We must also examine our activities to see if they are in the direction of our highest priorities. When we leave a bar at 2:00 a.m. we are certainly wasting a lot of time and consequently wasting our life away.
Many of our citizens rise early in the morning. They are our wives, mothers, cane harvesters, farmers, market vendors and even some of our students. They believe the old adage which says “Early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise”. We salute them.
If we want to be a people of respectability, good health and progress let us spend our time wisely. Let us work conscientiously to renew and restore our land to what it should be. Let us therefore stand in support with Hon. Minister Khemraj Ramjattan as he seeks to restore decency, law and order throughout our land.
Dr. Sewnauth Punalall

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