Language requirement for these scholarships is ludicrous

Oct 05, 2016 Letters

Dear Edior;
I am writing in relation to the publications of the Ministry of the Presidency, Department of the Public Service Notices of Awards in the Sunday Chronicle Newspaper dated October 2, 2016. The awards are offered on a plainly discriminatory basis. And they have breached the human rights of all Guyanese and at a policy level they are an affront to the rule of law.
Discrimination of any type, level or form is wrong and evil. The Constitution of Guyana guarantees Guyanese equal opportunities especially to those offered by the elected democratic government of Guyana. The awards are discriminatory for the fact that they unjustly and unreasonably restrict the class of applicants who may apply for one of the published scholarship awards.
The restrictions on the basis of the age, time of completion of undergraduate programme and the proficiency of a language which is not the official language spoken by Guyanese, breached the human and fundamental rights constitutionally and universally guaranteed to Guyanese.
It seems that this government is totally-out-of-touch with the socio-economic reality and challenges of the Guyanese population. Many Guyanese make tremendous sacrifice to acquire tertiary level education without any help from the government.
These individuals from their childhood days worked alongside their single parent guardian to provide daily meals and other necessities, household utilities and appliances; to generally break the cycle of poverty, illiteracy, abuse and/or lack of university graduates within a particular family.
Moreover, on a social basis at the age of thirty five (35) many Guyanese do not hold an undergraduate degree of their desire to pursue postgraduate or graduate studies. With respect to the time of completion of the undergraduate programme, this is discriminatory for the fact that many persons who would have acquired the necessary qualifications to qualify them for a government scholarship even before the election of the new democratic government will be unjustly marginalised by their elected, socialist, democratic government.
The restriction on the basis of a language which is not the official language of Guyana is the most ludicrous of all the restrictions and this will justify an individual holding the opinion that these apparent discriminatory acts which are seemingly lower on the spectrum of discrimination directly interfere with one innate, fundamental rights which are absolutely/necessarily intertwined with humanity’s existence.
That the Guyanese population if they allow these apparently minuscule acts of discriminatory will sure see the day when acts of discrimination by our elected government will intensify. And our government will unjustly, directly and openly choose which class of human lives matter and which do not and who deserves to live or not to live. Therefore to unreasonably restrain an applicant on the basis of age, time of completion of undergraduate programme and the proficiency of a language which is not the official language spoken by Guyanese is discrimination.
For an elected, democratic and socialist government these scholarship criteria unreasonably discriminate against certain class of individuals. Further, the restrictions cannot be supported by the doctrine of the general good of the country. The restrictions at a minimum are totally-out-of-touch with the reality of the social reality in Guyana and at the maximum they are purely wrong.
………………….
Marsha Archer
Dip. Accountancy, Bsc. Management (Hons),
LLB (Hons) and LEC (Incomplete)

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