Time and Minister Edghill

Oct 10, 2026 Editorial, News

(Kaieteur News) – “I will speak at the appropriate time.” I will speak at “the right time.” I will speak at the appointed time.” That was Minister of Public Works, Juan Edghill in three different verbalisations maintaining his distance from answering anything, offering anything at all, on the MV Barima tragedy. Minister Edghill is trying desperately to erect a wall between he and the boat tragedy that killed 73 citizens officially, and likely dozens more. For a man who claims that God is on his side, his trust in that God to take care of him in a tight situation is seemingly on the cool side. And because he has made that claim, he opened the door for a deeper examination of his work related to his ministerial portfolio.

Whatever the minister’s position on “the appropriate time” and “the right time” and “the appointed time” for him to clear the air on so much that remains unanswered, we take this position. The time is now for the minister to speak. There would be no better time. No suspicions that he needed time to mold his answers along clever political lines that conceal more, and inform less. This “appointed time” that he used as a defence for delaying saying anything, is that when President Ali releases him from giving an account of the lapses, gaps, and failures that led to the MV Barima’s last voyage and its death plunge? And his role as the minister responsible for the Transport and Harbours Department. It is a travesty of all that is lawful to charge three men attached to the T&HD, while the bigger fish are allowed to swim free.

The minister’s use of the “appointed time” inserts God into the death of the boat and many that boarded it on that fateful day in July. We caution him to be careful with invoking God in what has every resemblance to what is godless. We have no idea how long Minister Edghill will keep up these dodging charades of his. The time for him to face the families and the public is long past. He definitely was not so nervous about speaking angrily and impatiently in the early hours and days of the MV Barima tragedy. What has changed since then? He may think that he is couching his involvement in a convincing manner. It is obvious that the minister, like so many at senior levels in the PPPC Government, are good at fooling themselves. The MV Barima is a tragedy that calls for the beginning of frank conversations, not the time for ministerial hedges and more PPPC Government smokescreens, using shifty language.

Stability issues aside, why was the wharf to accommodate the MV Ma Liska unfinished after the spending of so much money and the passage of so much time? Why was the new boat used as the setting for fun for government-related people, and priority not given to putting it to ply a route that serves the poor communities in the hinterlands? Why the rush to charge three workers, when so much is still up in the air, two months later? Was charging those three boat workers the first hurried step to shift the blame for the deaths from where it rightly belongs? Why do projects that fall under the minister’s authority, often develop all these huge holes? There was the airport expansion project that lingered for years, wasted many millions. There is that wharf that could not be finished, because so much did not start out with the right groundwork laid. When matters go so terribly wrong, they should not first end up falling on the head of a boat captain and members of his crew, but on departmental heads and political heads.

Minister Edghill, with all his buying of time, has to know that in most other countries, he would have been the first head rolled, and that would be the start. The fact that he is still around provides the clearest evidence on how degraded this country has become, how there is no respect for the people. The fact that he is comfortable playing around with “right time” and “appointed time” confirms how accountability is almost totally lacking in Guyana today.

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Editorial, MV Barima, PPPC Government, Transport and Harbours Department

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