Keeping you updated on current events...
Tuesday May 25, 2021
ONLINE DAILY NEWSPAPER
US RATES GUYANA’S CRIME SITUATION AS CRITICAL
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REGION 10 RDC CONDEMNS
UG’S INSTITUTE FOR ENERGY DIPLOMACY
GOVERNMENT DOMINATION OF
LAUNCHES EXECUTIVE TRAINING COURSES
COUNCIL, AWARD OF CONTRACTS
IN OIL AND GAS, RENEWABLE ENERGY
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Tuesday May 25, 2021
US RATES GUYANA’S CRIME SITUATION AS CRITICAL
States Embassy on Duke and Young Street. This is directly outside the embassy. A statement from the embassy said that the visitor was attempting to park in a visitor’s parking lot directly across from the embassy. The assailants were travelling on The crime situation a reaction from the in Georgetown. Shortly on motorcycles robed motorcycles. They did in Guyana has forced United States embassy after 7:00, today two men a visitor to the United not present any weapons
but used physical force to grab personal items from inside the victim’s vehicle, the embassy noted. It added a reminder to Americans in the country that Georgetown is rated critical for the crime. It said that this rating was contained in the Department of State’s Security Environment Threat List.
REGION 10 RDC CONDEMNS GOVERNMENT DOMINATION OF COUNCIL, AWARD OF CONTRACTS constructing drains, building schools, and health posts, constructing security huts, and building revetments. Indeed, because our contractors reside in these communities, and their employees live where the work is being undertaken, they cannot afford to deliver shoddy and substandard work. Other persons coming into these communities and leaving with the income they make are insulated by distance from the work they put out.
its representatives on the Regional Tender Board. The law is clear and it states that apart from the appointments made at the national level, the other appointments are made by the Regional Administration. The Regional Administration works FOR and ON BEHALF OF the elected Chairman and Councilors of the Regional Democratic Council in question and acts on the lawful instructions of the Council.
persons appointed to serve on the Regional Tender Board, including choosing which Councilors should sit there. This must be corrected forthwith since the Administration simply executes the decisions of the Council and should not be allowed to carry out these important functions in contravention to the direction of the Council. We will therefore continue to insist that the Regional Executive Officer of Region 10, who acts as the Chairman
Minister Dharmlall at Linden RDC
Over the years the Regional Democratic Council of Region 10 has made it clear that the preferred methodology is that the people of Region 10 participate in the provision of goods and services that contribute to the development of this Region. This would mean that attention should be given to the award of contracts to residents of the Region in which these development projects are being executed, especially in the communities along the rivers and in Amerindian villages. A statement from the Regional Development Council noted that on his first visit and interaction with the RDC here, Minister of Local Government and Regional Development Nigel Dharamlall had endorsed this position.
The RDC contended that he was sure that residents of the Region possess the skills to execute these projects and that contract applications by residents of the Region should carry greater weight than those from outside of the Region. Minister of Labour Joseph Hamilton is also on record during his visit to Linden stating that even if residents, and especially women and youths, do not have the skills necessary to carry out these projects, then he would advocate for the training of these persons before the award of the contracts to ensure that persons from Region 10 get these contracts. These positions all agree with the call of the RDC of Region 10 for residents of our Region to actively participate in the execution of these development projects by
way of being awarded these contracts. The Regional Tender Board is made up of persons all appointed by the current government. One would have thought that if they really had the interest of the people of Region 10 at heart, then it would have been an easy task to have these projects awarded in accordance with their public utterances. However, it is apparent that these utterances are just for show and political grandstanding because when these projects are awarded by the very Tender Boards that the government exacts control over, we see that over 70% of these contracts are awarded to people resident outside of the Region 10. Make no mistake, these are not unduly technical contracts. Our residents are equally capable of
Regional Chairman - Region 10 Deron Adams
They are not as intimately familiar with the tides of the rivers and their effect on the revetments and wharves to be built, the soil composition, swampy history and drainage patterns of some of our areas and the effect (or lack thereof) of the drains they build. The Regional Democratic Council of Region 10 will continue to also press forward with its demand to decide on
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The RDC Region 10 is therefore adamant that the Regional Administration is not a law unto themselves nor are they controlled and directed by the Ministry of Local Government if the tenets of the laws governing the establishment of the Regional Councils are to be followed. What is currently being propagated is that the Administration through the Regional Executive Office alone decides on the
of the Regional Tender Board, consult with and recognize the decision of the Regional Democratic Council of Region 10 with respect to those persons who sit on this Tender Board apart from those nominated by the National Procurement and Tender Administration. Avenues of redress to this situation are currently being explored and will definitely be exercised.
Tuesday May 25, 2021
UG’S INSTITUTE FOR ENERGY DIPLOMACY LAUNCHES EXECUTIVE TRAINING COURSES IN OIL AND GAS, RENEWABLE ENERGY The University of Guyana’s Institute for Energy Diplomacy has announced a suite of Executive Level Professional Courses to begin in June 2021. Courses will be taught by leading international academics and experts from Universities around the world with long track records in training for the energy sector. The Institute will deliver a minimum of two professional courses per month for the rest
of 2021 and expects to accelerate its offerings in 2022. IED aims to certify several hundred persons across various disciplines in its first year of offerings commencing from June 2021 as the University rolls out its programmes. This is intended to help fill the performance gaps and expressed interests of professionals in Guyana and the region. The professional courses currently being offered are: Energy
Markets, Oil and Gas Value Chain, Energy Transport and Shipping, and Crude Oil Trading The courses cover not only a range of upstream, midstream, and downstream oil and gas activities but equip participants with wider energy training. Prospective participants are expected to possess an undergraduate degree or at least five years of experience in a related field. Each professional
course is assessed by a 100% final-online exam and taught over 1 or 2 weeks. Persons may opt for an exam or no exam
mode. However, note that the certification and costs of the two options will differ. Interested persons can
visit www.ugied.com or contact the Institute directly at team@ugied. com or +592 613 5776 for more information.
The Police Service Commission and police ranks facing disciplinary action
Article 212 (1) of the Constitution of the Cooperative Republic of Guyana gives the Police Service Commission sole authority to “make appointments to any rank in the Police Force of and above the rank of Inspector, the power to exercise disciplinary control over persons holding or acting in such offices and the power to remove such persons from office”. Based on previous provisions of the Constitution, this is interpreted to mean the power of the Commission relates to appointments from the rank of Inspector to Assistant Commissioner. Article 212 (2) states “The Police Service Commission may, by direction in writing and
subject to such conditions as it thinks fit, delegate any of its power under the preceding paragraph to any one or more of the members of the Commission or to the Commissioner of Police or, in the case of the power to exercise disciplinary control, to any member of the Police Force. The Police (Discipline) Act Chapter 17:01 sets out offences against discipline and the procedure to deal with complaints of disciplinary breaches. Section 5 of the Police (Discipline) Act Chapter 17:01 states:5 (1) “every alleged commission of an offence against discipline under this Act shall be investigated as soon as practicable by a member of the Force not below the rank of sergeant and of a higher rank than the
member of the Force who is alleged to have committed the offence”. 5 (3) “the investigating officer shall, as soon as practicable, inform the member of the Force alleged to have committed an offence against discipline in writing in a language he understands of the offence he is alleged to have committed, and the particles of the facts constituting the offence, and of his rights to refuse to make any written or oral statement to the investigating officer, unless he otherwise desires”. All allegations of breaches of discipline against officers or inspectors are referred to the Police Service Commission by the administration of the Guyana Police Force,
except forrare cases, which are referred to the Commission by the Police Complaints Authority. The Police Service Commission cannot, and does not investigate these matters.The provisions of Article 212 (2) are utilized and the authority to conduct the investigation is delegated to an officer of the Guyana Police Force with theappropriate rank. (Section 5 (1) above refers).According to the Police (Discipline) Act no investigation can commence unless and until the rank against whom the allegation is made is informed in writing in a language he understands of the offence he is alleged to have committed. (Section 5 (3) above refers). In the Force the document that is given to the rank who is alleged to have committed and offence against discipline is referred to as a “breach of discipline notice”. 2At the conclusion of an investigation a report with recommendation(s) is submitted to the Commission. If the recommendation is for the rank who is alleged to have committed an offence against discipline is to be charged, the Commission appoints one
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or more Police Officers to form a Disciplinary Tribunal to inquire into the matter. This is in keeping with Article 212 (2) of the Constitution. The inquiry conducted by the Tribunal takes the form of a court hearing. The rank who is charged is given the opportunity to call witnesses on his behalf, to cross examine witnesses and to make submissions. In other words he is given due process. He is also permitted to get another member of the force to assist him with his defence. Section 6 (1) of the Police (Discipline) Act refers. It must be noted that the Police (Discipline) Act does not allow for the rank who is charged with an offence against discipline to have legal representation at the inquiry. The main issue is the quality on the investigations that are conducted and the inordinate delay it takes to complete what are sometimes basis investigations. There are also unnecessary delays and prolongation of inquiries. The Police Service Commission has
repeatedly complained to the Administration of the Force about this matter. There is little evidence that the Administration of the Force has addressed this issue. It is to be noted that the current Commission, which came into being in August 2018, has been making every effort to expedite complaints made against ranks. Many ranks against whom allegations have been made can attest to this fact. It is important to note that the Commission cannot go outside what it is empowered by the Constitution to do. In the absence of constitutional changes the remedy seems to be that members of the force to whom the authority is delegated to investigate and conduct inquires must be made to expedite these assignment or face sanctions. The alternative in the current situation, which is implied by some, seems to be that no action should be taken when reports of breaches of discipline are made against ranks. The consequences of this course will have unimaginable effects on discipline and the function of the Force, which some will say is already in a sorry state.
Friday May 21, 2021
In an effort to clamp down on a racket of stolen vehicles, Police in the Berbice Area has made an arrest of the main suspect while recovering a number of stolen cars yesterday. In a statement, the Guyana
POLICE SMASH CAR THEFT RING
Police Force noted that a party of police ranks headed by an Assistant Superintendent of Police conducted an operation in the Berbice area and unearthed from an area four
suspected stolen vehicles. Those vehicles were later taken to the Rose Hall Outpost pending an investigation. The police reported that the said raid was conducted in the New Market Street, where a white Fielder wagon bearing registration number PVV 6272, and a silver-grey Premio bearing registration number PRR 3989 were found Further checks in Rose Hall, Corentyne, Berbice found more cars, is a silver-grey Premio PTT 9316 and a Fielder
wagon PTT 7651. A search was also conducted at the home of a female nurse of Rose Hall, Corentyne, and in the lower flat, a quantity of car-related documents was found. These were taken to the Rose Hall Outpost and lodged, pending investigation. A search was also conducted at the home of a 75-year-old pensioner of Rose Hall, Corentyne in the upper flat but nothing was found. During the search, a named suspect was detained and is presently in hospital under guard.
BULLYING AND DISCRIMINATING ARE HALLMARKS OF SOME PEOPLE
ADAM’s Notebook The world is full of examples of the strong and powerful taking advantage of the weak. Bullying is a classic example of the powerful subduing the weak. More often than not the bully or the perceived strong and powerful may pick on a person who, though possessing the ability to retaliate, would often shrug and try to move on. While this may work sometimes, for the greater part, bullies being less educated than the average person who would reason or who would let better judgment prevail continues the attack. The past week saw a continuation of the perceived strong and powerful using the seat of power to bring an ordinary person to his knees or at worse, demean him in the eyes of the wider society. This is the case of Brian Tiwarie, a self-made businessman, who climbed the ladder of entrepreneurship and expanded his operations. He set up a number of diverse companies.
info@guyanapostonline.com
There is the story of the moth and the flame. The moth saw the flame and thought that it looked beautiful. Sadly, it got too close and got burnt. Some people flirted with the flame but decided that it was too dangerous and moved on. But the flame can be unforgiving. There are many people who have found an unforgiving political situation. Most of them worked with a previous administration, some as far back as forty years. These people remained unforgiving and moved to destroy them. The cases of the public servants who were dismissed these past few months are just one example. The placing of other public servants before the courts, even though the charge may fall through is another. The bottom line is that these people charged would have to find money that could have been used in other areas to satisfy legal costs. Soon after acceding to the seat of government, there were people who turned their attention to
Tiwarie. They attacked his ownership of the property; they revoked contracts granted under the previous administration; they threatened to shut Tiwarie out of future contracts. This threat was mouthed by Minister Deodat Indar. He said that he was going to write to the Central Tender Board to have the body refuse to accept tenders submitted by BK International. Indar does not end there. He goes to the press with a statement that Tiwarie is removing sand from Number 63 Beach on the Corentyne. Banks DIH and Demerara Distillers Limited produce a brew that does strange things to some people. If one imbibes too much one could become disoriented. Many people have lost track of time. Some went home but could remember how they did. Indar went to Number 59 Village where he saw a pit resulting from reef sand extraction by BK International. He stood at the location and
announced that he was at Number 63 Village. This must have been the result of the brew produced by Banks DIH and DDL. Indar must have been disoriented not to know where he was. His outburst continued the attempt to bully Tiwarie. He actually said that he would have Tiwarie return the sand to the location, something that he has no power to do. Such was his intention that he got favourable news outlets to publish his utterings on the front page of their newspapers. Despite all the attempts to correct him, Indar simply refuses to change his position. In
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fact, confronted with his mistake he opted to remain silent. And rest assured, there will be no apology to Tiwarie for the embarrassment. And no sooner had the Number 63 Village accusation ended than another surfaced. One of Indar’s followers published another statement designed to accuse Tiwarie of something of which he knows nothing. The accusation is that Tiwarie owns Village Voice, a nascent newspaper that is published online and in hard copy. The writer of the social media post states that Tiwarie is behind the paper and
that Adam Harris is one of the principals. Perhaps the brew that Indar drinks are shared among his followers . It clouds their vision and removes their short-term memory. The man behind Village Voice moved to the courts and secured a writ against the publishers of the newspaper. He named every operative and how much money they were paid. None of the names was Brian Tiwarie and none was Adam Harris. But that information seemed not to make its way into the heads of those who are bent on attacking Tiwarie and slandering him.
Vaccine refusal is as dangerous a pandemic as COVID-19
By Sir Ronald Sanders (The writer is Antigua and Barbuda’s Ambassador to the United States and the Organization of American States. He is also a Senior Fellow at the Institute of Commonwealth Studies at the University of London and Massey College at the University of Toronto. The views expressed are entirely his own) Vaccine refusal is fast becoming as dangerous to human health and to economies as the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2019, even before the novel coronavirus was confirmed and began its spread around the world, the World Health Organization (WHO) revealed that vaccine refusals had led to a resurgence of diseases such as measles in countries that were close to eliminating them. The WHO identified vaccine refusal as one of the 10 leading threats to global health. At
that time, complacency, inconvenience in access, and a lack of confidence were said to be the driving factors for people’s refusal to inoculate against disease. Since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, the problem has become worse and so widespread that a comprehensive approach by all governments and non-governmental organizations, globally, is now necessary to overcome it. Promoted on social media platforms by farright organisations and church groups in the U.S., the anti-vaccine propaganda has spread like wildfire, convincing persons at all levels of societies that they would either die from an inoculation or some harmful material would be injected into their bodies. Religious groups in the Caribbean, influenced by fundamentalist U.S. churches, also encourage
their followers not to vaccinate. Research done by the New York Times reported, on April 5, that “among evangelicals in the U.S., Pentecostal and charismatic Christians may be particularly wary of the vaccine, in part because their tradition historically emphasizes divine health and miraculous healing in ways that can rival traditional medicine”. Charismatic churches also attract followers in the Caribbean. The most popular social media platforms used by anti-vaxxers are Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram which have all committed to banning anti-vaccine content. But, accounts on these platforms turn up as quickly as they are taken down. In turn, the propaganda, which includes fabricated videos purporting to show actual events, is communicated tens of thousands of times around the world on
WhatsApp. Governments and social media platforms, such as those named in this commentary, as well as organizations such as the WHO and the Pan-American Health Organization (PAHO), must gather specialists together to find ways to counter the antivaccination propaganda campaigns and to strengthen educational progammes showing the benefit of vaccines. PAHO has started using Facebook to educate about the benefits of vaccines, but more effective communications techniques should be used, including dropping huge images of syringes and needles, that may be reinforcing reticence to inoculate. Groups of persons in many parts of the world, who decline to take the COVID-19 vaccine, now pose a risk to themselves and the people with whom they come into contact, especially their families. They also pose a risk to the opening-up of the economies of their countries. Data, gathered worldwide, shows that the claims of the anti-vaxxers, concerning detrimental effects of the vaccine, are wrong. Figures confirm that the COVID-19 vaccine prevents severe infection and deaths at astounding rates. Studies show that
in Israel for instance, vaccines prevented hospitalization among adults 65 and older by 94%. They also prevented symptomatic infection among healthcare workers by 97% and blocked severe disease by 97.4% in Qatar. Dr. Monica Gandhi, an Infectious-Diseases Specialist, and Professor of Medicine at The University of California at San Francisco, reports that serious infections among vaccinated individuals are extremely rare. She points out that “of over 115 million vaccinated Americans, only 0.0009% contracted severe COVID-19 after vaccination despite the virus continuing to circulate in their communities. As she concluded: “Vaccines truly defang the virus”. In the U.S. and Britain where (at the time of writing on 20 May) 48.09% and 55.49% of the populations have been vaccinated, data shows that vaccines also block transmission. People, who have been inoculated against the coronavirus, are rightly concerned that, despite their responsible action in taking the vaccine, irresponsible persons are asserting their right to refuse it. The question that has to be asked is: whose rights are greater? Are the rights to safeguard lives and livelihood less than the right to put lives
and livelihoods at risk by refusing to be vaccinated? This is not a moral dilemma; it is a commonsense question, deserving a common-sense answer. However, no answer is being attempted as individual governments and their health authorities shy away from the question for political reasons. No ruling political party wants to risk losing electoral support to its rivals on the back of an accusation of depriving people of their rights. Yet, when that right is upheld, it threatens others and entire societies. Just as measles has returned in countries where groups of people decline to be inoculated against it, COVID-19 will not be subdued or eliminated in countries where groups of people refuse to be vaccinated. This conflict must be tackled and resolved by global agreement and action. No one country can act alone. Maybe the answer lies in an intense education programme globally constructed, financed, and implemented. The mantra that “we’re all in this together” assumes a profound global relevance for maintaining life and sustaining livelihoods. Doing nothing is not a solution. The 74th World Health Assembly being held from May 24 to June 1, is the ideal place to start.
Unnecessary hassle at CJIA Dear Editor, On April 25, 2021, I was making the midnight Jet Blue trip to NY. In the departure lounge after clearing Immigration, and preparing to be screened, I had my second most horrifying experience with the screening technician. Because of a radiationrelated cancer surgery I had in 2007, I requested
a pat-down instead of using the x-ray machine. This request was denied, I was made to parade myself four times in and out of that machine with undue care from uncouth staff. As if this was not enough, CANU continued with the most degrading search on my personal effects. I am a septuagenarian; I was never involved in
transporting any illicit stuff, and would like to know why I am being targeted when attempting to depart Guyana. I would like Mr. Ramesh Ghir and the Civil Aviation Director to note my harassment. These people need to be trained. They are an embarrassment to Guyana. Traumatized citizen.
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