Latest update December 19th, 2024 3:22 AM
AFC calls for boycott of Govt. press conferences
…says non-answers, insult to the media disgraceful
“I would call for a complete boycott of these press conferences by the media because you are not getting answers…you are being insulted at every press conference that you have by the Vice President (Bharrat Jagdeo) and now Minister Bharrat, and I think it’s ridiculous” – Dr. Vincent Adams
Kaieteur News – Senior member of the Alliance For Change (AFC) party and former head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has called on the media to boycott press conferences hosted by the government.
AFC member, Dr. Vincent Adams
Dr. Adams, during an AFC-held virtual media briefing on Friday addressed the press conference hosted by Minister of Natural Resources, Vickram Bharrat on Tuesday. He said, “It was very disappointing to say the least…I think anybody should be stunned by his non-answers and his complete lack of knowledge or deliberate misinformation when he attempted to answer questions.”
The former Head of the EPA pointed out that the Minister ducked the question on who would be responsible for the costs of an oil spill outside of the Stabroek Block and went on to “shamelessly” take credit for the capping stack provision.
A capping stack is a heavy piece of equipment that is used to seal off a blown out well and stop the flow of hydrocarbons. Dr. Adams said that for the Minister to give the impression that Guyana is ahead of every country since it will have its own capping stack was “absolute nonsense and disingenuous”.
Meanwhile, on the issue of monitoring of the oil operations offshore, the former EPA Head said, “The Minister needs to be talking about the monitoring programme the Coalition had set up with the World Bank to have experts- a group of 36 member team- a petroleum unit of highly qualified professionals to be on that ship 24/7. What this Minister is saying is that we are going to be monitoring a spill.”
He continued, “Who cares about a spill after it occurred? Minister monitoring does not mean to monitor after the fact, when something happens, monitoring means to have an oversight team to monitor and make sure that a spill is prevented…”
Dr. Adams, a Petroleum Engineer, concluded that it was “absolute foolishness” for Guyana to be looking for an oil spill sheen from satellite imaging. He was keen to note the importance of the country not waiting after an event has occurred, but to have the human resources on the Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessels to mitigate against such an event.
Boycott
The AFC member highlighted that from viewing Minister Bharrat’s press engagement, it is clear that the politician is yet to address a number of questions that were raised. In fact, he commended this newspaper for publishing the questions have not been answered by the Minister. See link below for article: https://www.kaieteurnewsonline.com/2023/11/17/vp-jagdeo-refuses-to-answer-key-questions-not-answered-by-oil-minister/
He said, “That is the way that this government operates, the first thing that came to mind that I would call for a complete boycott of these press conferences by the media because you are not getting answers to it. You are being insulted at every press conference that you have by the Vice President (Bharrat Jagdeo) and now Minister Bharrat and I think its ridiculous.”
Dr. Adams argued, “They owe it to the public to give the public information (but) they hold on to every single piece of information, you can’t get anything out of them and then they insult people who are supposed to be informing the public.”
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