The priceless role private education has played

May 10, 2017 Letters

Dear Editor,
In a few days’ time, it will be two years since David Granger was elected President of the Republic. He promised Guyanese that with his APNU+AFC Govt. he would improve their everyday life and meet their basic needs. The evidence so far suggests otherwise as the President and his Ministers have been making many useless trips abroad at taxpayers’ expense rather than concentrate on their mandate to solve the many problems facing the nation. For example, the President stated recently that, “he has no intention of shuttering down the sugar industry”. Yet since taking office nearly 1,800 sugar workers have lost their jobs and several processing facilities have ceased operation.
GuySuCo is financially bankrupt and his APNU+AFC Govt. has no strategy for consolidation and diversification to make it viable. Further, the President has failed to rein in and bring to justice those corrupt PPP/C officers who were engaged in such fraudulent schemes as the Pradoville 2; the one exception being the disappearance of Law Reports from the AG’s Office. What about missing Govt. vehicles, etc.
For its part, many of the APNU+AFC Govt. employees seem to have taken the cue from their PPP/C counterparts and are involved in fraudulent schemes like those at the Gold Board, Deeds Registry, the employment of phantom teachers within the Ministry of Education and several other misdeeds still being uncovered.
President Granger instead of seriously fulfilling his mandate to govern competently and well to solve the nation’s many problems seems to take every opportunity to escape his duties by making expensive overseas trips at taxpayers’ expense under the pretext that they are in the national interest. His recent state visits using chartered aircraft to the Bahamas and Great Britain accompanied by an entourage of Who’s Who attests to this, as nothing of significance was accomplished.
This should be of great concern to all Guyanese as the Bahamas is a group of islands that have no economic benefit to offer Guyana except sand and sunshine while Great Britain cannot make any trade deal or investment to Guyana without approval from the European Union. So what has President Granger really achieved from his latest expensive overseas trips? He should level with the Guyanese people and let them know.
Finally, it is ironic that President Granger and his APNU+AFC Govt. are spending millions of scarce dollars on useless overseas trips while in an attempt to raise revenue they have imposed a hefty tax on private education and education materials. The local public school system is a dismal failure as its teachers badly need training, infrastructures are falling apart and resources are lacking for basic teaching material.
It is under this dark educational cloud that concerned parents have scraped together whatever little resources they have to give their children the opportunity for a quality education to acquire the knowledge and skills which will enable them to progress in a rapidly changing environment.
The APNU+AFC Govt. instead of imposing a crippling tax burden on private education should have set up standards and monitor that these are met. After all, the Minister of Education like myself knows full well that had it not been for private education in our early life, we probably would still be struggling to make a living planting rice and/or grazing cows in the lowlands of the Mahaica River.
Charles Sohan

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