Can Granger and Nagamootoo tell the nation if they accept this?

Nov 07, 2016 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

In 2012, we were heading back to Georgetown from Region 6. It was nighttime and we stopped at a restaurant to eat. At the table with me were Christopher Ram, Gerhard Ramsaroop and Michael Carrington. I can recall Chris Ram telling the table that he can count on his fingers the number of public companies Guyana has. You don’t need training in finance and economics to know that it may be less than ten which are the numbers on your finger or just under ten.
The point is Guyana has no major investment climate and does not have many privately owned companies. For that reason I thought that the opening up of a stock exchange was naïve. It is useless to make a comparison between Guyana and Trinidad, Barbados, Jamaica and Surinam. Why then must public money go to birthing a School of Business at UG? This is an act of post-colonial betrayal and political madness.
Surely, the UG had to have done a study before it made the announcement. The Faculty of Social Sciences turns out hundreds of graduates each year in the following areas; economics, business management, marketing and accountancy. Over the past two decades many of the graduates in those subjects ended up as bank tellers. I know at least ten of my students who majored in business related areas and are tellers. School of the Nations now has a MBA degree programme which is turning out dozens each year.
Where are we going to put these graduates? But that is not the pertinent question. Why after 50 years of Independence our only university which was opened up on the British model has followed that pattern unto this day? UG has approximately 5000. Half of that number is in the Social Sciences. UG no longer offers the degree in many science subjects. Physics was the first to go in 1990. On top of this School of Business project, there are plans for a School of Law.
What about a degree in oceanography? Guyana resides next to the Atlantic Ocean. What about a degree in marine biology and sea defence engineering? Why hasn’t UG produced at least a few courses in forensic science? Why public money will be spent on the School of Business when the labs at the Faculty of Technology are almost non-existent. Please give me some credit for knowing what takes place at UG – I worked there for 26 years and my daughter has an Associate Degree in Chemistry from UG. At the time of writing, UG’s medical programme has been decertified by the relevant Caribbean body. I ask again and will keep on asking David Granger and Moses Nagamootoo; does this country have to spend taxpayers’ money on a School of Business and a School of Law?
Let us turn to David Granger’s style of presidency and we will come to the man with fifty years experience in politics- Moses Nagamootoo. People have told me Granger is bent on not micro-managing. Point taken! But management must not be confused with policy-making. The President should not tell his ministers how to do their jobs but he must tell them when they make policies that are not in the nation’s interest.
UG exists in a post-colonial world where developmental priorities cannot be an emulation of the curriculum we inherited from the English. The problem this country faces is low science, low technology, low manufacturing base, low agricultural science and low achievements in domestic engineering output. In keeping with a post-colonial agenda of development, the country’s only university cannot place emphasis on sociology (for example) at the expense of agricultural sciences. That is not only foolish but lacks commonsense.
So we come now to Moses Nagamootoo. I keep saying that we can forgive Granger for his mistakes; he lacks solid experience in politics and government. What has Moses done with his 50 years of praxis? Moses just returned from India. Did he see any emphasis on the classics, linguistics etc? No serious university can do away with the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences but the Third World’s future is bound up with success in science and technology. That is where the emphasis must be at Third World universities.
Why after 50 years of failure in manufacturing, sea defence engineering, agricultural science, we are opening a School of Business at UG and doing this when the faculties of Natural Sciences and Technology are falling and need every cent they can get. Are the President and the Prime Minister in agreement with this policy? When I see both of them, I will ask.

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Can Granger and Nagamootoo tell the nation if they accept this?

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