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Thursday Oct. 28, 2021
ONLINE DAILY NEWSPAPER
DISTURBING TREND GREETS RIGHTS COMMISSION OF THE CHILD
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WOMEN FREED OF SOCU INSPIRED FRAUD CHARGES
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DOUBLE MURDER ACCUSED SKIPS LUSIGNAN PRISONS
Thursday Oct. 28, 2021
DISTURBING TREND GREETS RIGHTS COMMISSION OF THE CHILD
As the Rights of the Child Commission Celebrates 10 years since it came into existence, that celebration comes on a rather sour note as the commission has reported in its 2017 to 2020 reports that there have been some distressing findings. This is according
to the Chair of the Commission, Ms. Aleema Nasir, who handed over the reports to the Speaker of the National Assembly. Ms. Nasir said that reports show signs of very troubling times as some children continue to face abuses, neglect, no schooling among other troubling factors.
“While there are very good things in our reports we are very, very distressed at some of the findings in the regions, especially. There is a lot of neglect, a lot of abuse, a lot of incest. And these things have been bothering us, there is a lot of things that have been happening to our
children.” Ms. Nasir however remains optimistic that as time goes by, due to the report and findings stakeholders will find a way to fix some of the challenges. “We hope that in the near future that we will be able to make a change in the lives of our dear children of
Guyana and make life better for them. We wish the people who work with children all the best in dealing with the situations.” The reports were compiled, according to Ms. Nasir, with visits to all the regions, where the team engaged police, the hospitals, the medical personnel, community workers, and teachers in order to fit the report together. The said report is expected to the tabled to the National Assembly and after then made public. Speaker of the National Assembly, Manzoor Nadir, collected the reports and complimented the chairperson and all of the Commissioners for the hard work that they did over the last decade.
He also noted that there must be some hope that things will change when the reports reach the hands of other stakeholders. The Speaker said that he sees the struggle of the commission in dealing with children coming across the borders and not being registered. These are hard to track but at the same time, they require the benefit of their human right. This, the Speaker said, fits the category of the family now returning to Guyana with children that have not been registered. On the point of equal access for children, Mr. Nadir emphasized that in order for them to benefit, those parents who have not registered their kids must do so.
DOUBLE MURDER ACCUSED WOMEN FREED OF SOCU INSPIRED FRAUD CHARGES SKIPS LUSIGNAN PRISONS
Two members of the Guyana Police Force who were charged in connection with a $19M fraud at the force’s finance department walked free after attorneys representing the accused made no cases submissions to the court. Special Corporal 14750 Jenneka Carmichael and Constable 25598 Tatayana Smith were both before Magistrate Annette Singh on trial for deleting from a GPF computer which purported to show several transactions of the force. When the matter was called before Magistrate Singh the lawyers
contended that nothing in evidence would have linked the suspects to the crime. That argument was upheld and the two women were freed of the charge. Carmichael and Smith were hauled before Georgetown Magistrates’ Court by the Special Organised Crime Unit (SOCU) back in April to answer a charge of illegal data interference. Earlier, the duo appeared before Chief Magistrate, Ann Mc Lennan, and entered not guilty pleas to the charge which was filed under Section 5(2) (a) of the
Cybercrime Act 2018. It is alleged by SOCU that the two women intentionally and without lawful excuse or justification, deleted electronic data from the Guyana Police Force (GPF) computer that was in the Administrative Office of the Felix Austin Police College. A probe was launched by SOCU after information was received that falsified feeding accounts were stored on the computer but before SOCU could have accessed the computer, all feeding account files were deleted. The two accused were allegedly the only ranks that operated the computer. Both women were granted $150,000 bail and the matter was adjourned to May 6, 2021. They were represented by attorneysat-Law E. Stephen and Bernard Da Silva.
Close to a week after Annandale Resident, Kapildeo Gangadin was slapped with two murder charges, one related to killing 20-year-old, Ganesh Persaud, during a robbery at Persaud family’s electronic store at Strathspey, ECD on October 15. The other murder charge was linked to the killing of Mukesh Mangra, who was stabbed to death during a robbery back in 2020. On Thursday, authorities at the Lusignan Prisons reported that
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Gantadin has escaped from the Lusignan Prison while being quarantined for COVID-19. As a search, according to the Guyana Prison, a manhunt has been launched into finding Gangadin who escaped just around 4:05 this morning. According to Director of Prisons (ag) Nicklon Elliot, Gangadin was housed in the Quarantine section of the Prison. Initial investigations revealed that Gangadin had tampered with the housing unit.
Mr. Elliot added that upon exiting the housing unit, Gangadin ventured to the back of the prison where he used a piece of cloth and a pole to scale the fence. He proceeded into the farms where he scaled the gate and made good his escape into the dumpsite. Mr. Elliot further noted that immediately a joint patrol was established at the outer perimeter of the prison and a search has been launched by the Joint Services to recapture the escapee. Those efforts seem futile at the moment, but the prison authorities are warning persons that aiding and abetting the escape is a criminal offence. As such, the service is asking anyone knowing the whereabouts of the escapee should contact the nearest Police station or call 911.
Thursday Oct. 28, 2021
AMERICA TO OPEN ITS BORDERS BUT SOME FULLY VACCINATED GUYANESE MAY NOT BE ALLOWED IN America is set to open its borders to travelers in November after two years of being closed but only to those who are fully vaccinated. The Guyana Government and the National COVID-19 Task Force will consider this requirement for travelers coming into Guyana also. This is according to the Minister of Health Dr. Frank Anthony. Dr. Anthony said that the authorities are now discussing the way forward after they have acknowledged the said change for the new month. “Fully vaccinated are becoming what countries are going to accept, and if you need to travel out of Guyana, let’s say you are going to the United States; from the 8th November, you must be fully vaccinated; you have to get both doses of the vaccine. “The Task Force here is reconsidering because our definition of vaccination was at least if you got one dose. The task force is currently examining whether to implement fully vaccinated or what measures to take.” Currently, America is allowing travelers who are partially vaccinated with one dose of the American Food and Drug
Administration(FDA) and World Health Organization(WHO) approved vaccines. America also required that persons also seeking to travel to the US must have also, a negative COVID-19 test. However, in the next two weeks, America will shift that rule when borders will open to those traveling into America by road and by air but only to those fully vaccinated, meaning those having both does. Airlines are set to be in charge of ensuring that these rules are followed or face strict consequences. With the new rules looming, travelers are expected to have some difficult road ahead since
380,257 people have the Sputnik vaccine which taken only one dose, isn’t recognized by the representing 74.1% of the WHO and the FDA. adult population. 241,211 people have collected both doses of a vaccine, representing only 47 % of people being fully vaccinated. This means that 139,000 are yet to be fully vaccinated and this is said to be a worrying sign. Minister Anthony is pleading for those persons to get their second dose vaccines. “There is still a lot of people who need to come back to get their second dose vaccine.” Minister Anthony added. Some Guyanese have the issue of not being able to travel to America since they are vaccinated with
Fire service saves Post Office after arson attack
evening and was The Guyana Fire alerted to a fire at the Service received a call Charlestown Post Office at 21:08 PM Tuesday located at High Street,
eastern wall on the ground floor and three meters of the eastern and southern walls on the top floor were damaged as a result of the fire. A guard hut was also completely destroyed as a result of the fire. The supposed cause is a malicious setting by a person (s) unknown. The Guyana Fire Service is once again reminding citizens that there are harsh penalties to arson Ruimveldt Fire Station contain the fire and save attached Georgetown. attacks and once caught immediately responded the two-story wooden Water tenders 76, 105, perpetrators will face and concrete building. and 107 from the Central to the scene. the full brunt of the law. They were able to Two meters of the Fire Station and West
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SOME FACTS CANNOT BE DISPUTED
Adam’s
note book
Many years ago I was a teacher. In fact, that was my first job. It started way back in 1966. I entered the Government Teachers Training College in 1967 majoring in Chemistry and Physics. From time to time I was required to teach Mathematics when the teachers were not there. It was an exciting period in my life. It took at least three years to prepare children for the external examinations. I taught at the Bartica Government Secondary School, the only Grade B Secondary School to prepare and secure passes in Physics and Chemistry at the GCE O’ Levels to this day. Grade B Schools were expected to prepare children for Integrated Sciences. In those days, children
wrote the General Certificate Examinations commonly referred to as GCE. This year there were praises for those children who did remarkably well at the Caribbean Secondary Examinations and CAPE. These examinations have replaced the GCE O’ Levels and A’ Levels. I saw some Facebook posts, one by Education Minister Priya Manickchand. I merely posted whether credit should not go to the Coalition. I got no answer. When the Coalition came to office in 2015 there was a focus on the education system. I am not going to go into the figures that highlighted how poorly Guyana was performing when compared to the other Caribbean territories.
This year Guyana was the best-performing country. The results of these recent examinations reflected the four years of preparation under a modified and upgraded school system. However, there was no mention of this. Instead, there was talk about the Coalition doing nothing during its term in office. Then I saw the performance by the children at the Grade Six Assessment Examinations. Way back in the 1990s when Wilfred Success was a teacher at West Ruimveldt Primary School he secured some astounding results. That school secured six children in the top ten. The noise was deafening. Most of the people in the country claimed that Wilfred Success cheated; that
he had procured the examination papers in advance and had drilled the children. The reality is that he continued to produce top-performing children to the point that parents now seek him out. He has opened his private school. This year, again he got astonishing results. Only this time nobody claimed that he had cheated. He got four in the top ten and would be sending nearly two dozen children to Queen’s College. Indeed, there is the maxim that if the children have not learned, the teachers have not taught. Wilfred Success is a teacher and he has employed other teachers. The public schools did the best they could, bearing in mind that during this pandemic many parents, ordinary people, could not afford computers, did not have access to the internet and therefore could not get their children to attend online classes. There were 13,000 who wrote the exams. No more than 1,300 would go on to good secondary schools. Again, we should understand that many of the parents are not academically inclined so they did not give their children the needed attention and supervision. But many of these children did well under the circumstances. They
deserve congratulations. And there were some other things that caused raised eyebrows. Former Assistant Commissioner Paul Slowe was out of the country when SOCU laid charges for some incidents dating back to 2019. Heaven knows why those charges have surfaced only now. However, while Slowe was doing his job with the West Indies Cricket Board the charges were laid but not read to him. By way of a summons sent to Attorney at Law Nigel Hughes last week, he was informed that he needed to attend court. And that he did. When he was in the court four SOCU ranks decided that they should arrest him. If a man is in court to answer charges that have to be read to him and there was no arrest warrant, on what ground can he be arrested? The truth is that the authorities wanted to have him appear in court with handcuffs and shackles for no other reason than to embarrass him. He knows his rights and he resisted, causing the ranks to assault him. There have been criticisms of this episode from lawyers and former magistrates. There has been total silence from the Attorney General. This episode lends support to the widely held belief that the government is using the
police to harass and to embarrass those who dare to comment on its wrongdoings. It suspended the Police Service Commission as a means of preparing its own list of police promotions. Then the Attorney General files to the court for the move by the Police Service Commission to challenge the government’s refusal to recognize the PSC list of promotions, be struck out because the commission has been suspended by the government. He argues that there is no commission to represent the action. We’ll see where that argument goes. The other thing that bothered many people was the fact that a man, Colin Bailey, spent almost six years in jail on a murder charge when the police had no evidence to hold him. He was freed by the judge who questioned the fact that the matter reached the high court although there was no evidence against Colin Bailey. And while in jail, Bailey suffered a heart attack and contracted COVID. I have approached the DPP to explain how such a thing could happen. There were too many checks and balances. I am awaiting her response.
Speeding minibus kills pedal cyclist The family of a 47-year-old cyclist is now mourning the loss of their loved one after he was struck down by a minibus on his way home on Strangroen Public Road, Mahaica, East Coast Demerara. The dead man has been identified as a pedal cyclist, Seebaran Dhankumar, a resident of North Public info@guyanapostonline.com
Road, Mahaica, East Coast Demerara. According to reports coming from the police, the incident occurred just around 18:00 hours on Tuesday. Dhankumar met his demised after minibus BTT 3832 driven by Surujpaul Bissoon, 61, of Novar, Mahaicony, East Coast Demerara was
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proceeding east along the said road, allegedly at a fast rate of speed. Bissoon claimed that at the time he saw the pedal cyclist, cycling in front of him on the northern side of the road when the cyclist suddenly changed direction and ended up in his path. He added that he then applied brakes to avoid a
collision, but despite his efforts, he collided with the pedal cyclist. The 47-year-old cyclist was then picked up and taken to the Mahaicony Public Hospital where he was pronounced dead on arrival by a doctor. The driver remains in police custody.
Faulty electric point causes fire scare at NIS head office
Days after the Brickdam Police Station went up in flames, National Insurance Scheme (NIS) went on high fire alert and called in the Guyana Fire Service after an overloaded loaded switch started to smoke on Monday.
operations started to change the damaged points. Later when everything was under control, some staff operating in the affected area were told to take the rest of the day off, as power was expected to
The NIS was said to be the third fire emergency call for the day. There was another at the Guyana Post Office. Speaking to the media after the incident, the Divisional Commander of the Guyana Fire Service (GFS), Hemchandra Persaud, said that with such high fire risk the GFS remains on high alert also. “We have seen an increase in calls especially from (Monday). We had three calls. We would have responded to the GPO, NIS, and a bridge in Campbellville where there was a rubbish fire lit by someone.
that GFS due to the high risk has also shifted its approach due to high-level risk. “We are going to raise the level of preparedness; we are at the drawing board right now with senior officers knowing that we had a serious fire at the Brickdam Police Station. Of course, in life, we have to go through the vicissitude of life and there are always changes that we have to adapt to. “So, we are working as it is right now to look at our resource and to see what necessary we need, especially in this point in time, when we
According to the Guyana Fire Service, just before midday, in the Office of the General Manager, Holly Greaves, an electrical point started to smoke. The fire service responded with three fire trucks, an ambulance, and the ranks from Guyana Police Force. On arrival on the scene, firefighters explained that a point in the room was indeed smoking. With the aid of the policemen and women, the building was cleared of staff and others. With smoke still emanating from the point, prompted the shutting off the power to the building, they quickly tackled the affected area and the situation was quickly brought under control. The police also indicated that later the NIS Electrical Engineer quickly took over and
out for some time. The police advised the NIS to check the entire power supply chain to ensure that the problem does not occur again. The police also with safety in mind, to avoid a recurrence of the Brickdam Police Station fire a fire tender was left on standby.
“That fire was extinguished by the Campbellville units at GPO because it’s a high-rise building, it’s a Government building with lots of occupants. We would have sent a full response so that nothing got out of control,” Mr. Persaud explained. Mr. Persaud added
have a very hot weather and of course what is unfolding currently we have to first start thinking ahead and anticipate any eventuality.” This comes as the President, Mohammed Irfaan Ali blasted the GFS on its preparedness for the Brickdam Police Station fire.
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Guyana to release CSEC, CAPE and NGSA results by Oct. 15.
The Ministry of Education announced on Saturday, that the Caribbean Examination Council has chosen Guyana as the host country to ‘release’ this year’s CAPE and CSEC results on October 14, 2021. In addition, NGSA is expected to be released on October 15; with raw exam scores coming from Barbados. The Caribbean Examination Council’s (CXC) Caribbean Secondary Education Certification (CSEC) and Caribbean Advanced Proficiency Examinations (CAPE) were written during June -July this year. The examinations were written at a later date this year due to the effects, consequences, and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Caribbean and the world. The Ministry of Education announced on Saturday, that the Caribbean Examination Council has chosen Guyana as the host country to ‘release’ this year’s CAPE and CSEC results on October 14, 2021. These results will be available to candidates on the CXC’s online portal from October 15, 2021. The National Grade Six Assessment (NGSA) was equally affected by the pandemic and was written on August 4-5 of this year. Since 2016, CXC was contracted by the Government of Guyana to develop, administer and mark this examination/assessment annually. This year to further
advance the transparency and integrity of the examination/assessment, CXC’s responsibilities were extended and increased to include verification of raw scores. Additionally, to conduct and manage all reviews or appeals after the results are published and further to present the data and analysis of each year’s assessment. The Ministry of Education has been informed by CXC that the raw scores will be ready and sent from Barbados to Guyana by Tuesday, September 28, 2021, after which the National Data Management Authority (NDMA) will standardize the scores and offer placements according to the scores, and print results’ slips. In addition, from this year: 1. NGSA candidates will NOT be penalized with their raw scores because they were older than 12 years 6 months at the end of March of the year, the examination was written. 2. The standardized scores per subject will be rounded up to the nearest whole number and the TOTAL score will be given as a decimal number thereby offering candidates more fairness. The Education Ministry also encourages this year’s NGSA, CSEC and CAPE candidates to return all textbooks and resource materials to their respective schools. Failure to do so may result in being unable to access results
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