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Friday Oct. 29, 2021
ONLINE DAILY NEWSPAPER
GUYANA LOBBIES FOR DEVELOP3D COUNTRIES TO HONOUR GLOBAL WARMING PLEDGE
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ONE GETS THREE-YEAR JAIL TERM, COACCUSED REMANDED FOR COCAINE
Pg2 Pg3 PRISON ESCAPEE KAPILDEO GANGADIN RECAPTURED AT ONDERNEEMING, WBD
Friday Oct. 29, 2021
GUYANA LOBBIES FOR DEVELOP3D COUNTRIES TO HONOUR GLOBAL WARMING PLEDGE
President, Mohammed Irfaan Ali during a press conference
As the date moves closer towards the Conference of the Parties(COP) 26 on Climate Change, Guyana is expected to go to the conference with a united front. The meeting is attracting developing nations in an effort to have developed nations honor their obligations to the Paris Agreement. This United Front was announced by President, Mohammed Irfaan Ali during a press conference, where it was noted that CARICOM, CELAC, and the AOSIS are expected to stand together at the summit, as the fight continues for climate change. “Almost all the leaders are going to represent their interest, but in CARICOM we have had many meetings on coordinating our efforts. We are working with CARICOM, the Alliance of Small Island States. (AOSIS) we are working with (CELAC) Community of Latin American and the Caribbean States on joint position and Coordination. “That is why the peer discussion and bilateral meetings were so important. We are coordinating even
with the Maldives,” President Ali noted. The Paris Agreement sets out a global framework to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting global warming to well below 2°C and pursuing efforts to limit it to 1.5°C. It also aims to strengthen countries’ ability to deal with the impacts of climate change and support them in their efforts. The Paris Agreement is the first-ever universal, legally binding global climate change agreement, adopted at the Paris climate conference (COP21) in December 2015. Some 190 countries, including Guyana, have signed on to it. However, over time, countries have complained that the developed nations who pose a serious factor to climate change have not honored those obligations. One such obligation is to pledge US$100 billion toward fighting climate change. Guyana and others have not seen this pledge honoured. “At the Alliance for Small Island States Summit, I called for a renewed global focus in the fight against
climate change to meet the goals of the Paris agreement. Many will say that it is a broken record calling for the developed world to meet their commitment in terms of the US$100 Billion pledge and that we have been overworked. “We are getting nowhere with that message. We can compare with the democracy message; democracy is important; we have to keep talking about democracy where it does not exist but it’s not overworked. We can’t talk about new commitments on client’s issues and climate change when we are not honoring the existing commitment of US$100 billion,” Ali further noted. Ali emphasized the importance of this fund that is critical in ensuring that the developing nations who are more vulnerable, be funded to ensure they recover from the effects of present climate change. “Caribbean Small Island Developing States on the heels of COP 26, we call on leaders to share a particular focus on Climate Change and Disaster
Risk Management access to concession financing, high level of indebtedness, Natural Disasters funds and graduated transition. “Guyana supports the establishment of a voluntary fund to facilitate region disaster response.” While holding that front with other countries as COP 26 is set to take place around the corner,
Guyana’s position as an oil-producing nation will also be leveraged along with other oil-producing nations. “Guyana is in that unique position. We are not part of that Oil and Gas producing state and also we have strong credentials in the environment and we are taking leadership in the environment. “So, we had to enhance our collaboration with other countries who are oil and gas producing, so that we can also send that message of sustainability to them.” He added that Guyana has to move to a decarbonized world and this is the way forward or we will face the issues of the past. The president noted that technical personnel ahead of COP 26 will be working today ensuring that there is a united voice
while considering the various interests of all the cooperating nations. “As we speak now, we have the technical teams in the unit working bilaterally, working with different agencies coordinating efforts. Things are ongoing right now and in terms of commitment; the committee will be towards general goals.” President Ali said that this is important since in the end the agenda of the developed nation will continue and the developing nation will continue to remain behind. The COP26 summit which will be held in November is expected to bring parties together to accelerate action towards the goals of the Paris Agreement and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
PRISON ESCAPEE KAPILDEO GANGADIN RECAPTURED AT ONDERNEEMING, WBD
Prisoner, Kapildeo Gangadin
Escaped Prisoner, Kapildeo Gangadin, was recaptured Friday morning by police one day after he bolted from the Lusignan Prison. The double-murder accused was recaptured
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around 09:30 am in the vicinity of Onderneeming, West Bank Demerara, according to a statement from the Guyana Prison Service. The statement added that the escapee was in a minibus proceeding to Parika, East Bank Essequibo. However, acting on information, police on West Coast Demerara immediately launched a roadblock operation at Onderneeming Public Road, resulting in the capture of Gangadin. He was taken into custody and is currently been interviewed by members of the Guyana Police Force.
Meanwhile, the Prison Administration would like to express thanks to the ranks of the Guyana Police Force and the public for their commitment and dedication that led to the speedy recapture of the prisoner. Further, Director of Prisons (ag) Nicklon Elliot, assured that the Guyana Prison Service stands resolute in maintaining security within the country’s prisons. He also noted that officers who fail to adhere to the established security rules in order to maintain a secure and efficient environment in the prison system will be sanctioned.
ONE GETS THREE-YEAR JAIL TERM, CO-ACCUSED REMANDED FOR COCAINE
Three days after ranks from the Customs AntiNarcotics Unit (CANU) swooped down on the home of well-known suspected, drug trafficker Andre Gomes aka Zipper, and caught him along with another man with over four pounds of cocaine, the two appeared in court today. Joseph was slapped with a three-year jail sentence while his coaccused was remanded to prison. The two, 33-year-old Eon Joseph, and now 60-year-old Gomes, called
Zipper, appeared before Chief Magistrate Ann McLennan today. The two on October 26, last, at Craig Street, Campbellville, had in their possession two kilograms of cocaine. Zipper pleaded not guilty to the charge. However, Joseph took the rap for the bust and was slapped with a three-year jail sentence along with a $3.1 million fine. The two were represented by Attorney at law, Stand Dhurjon. In an application for bail for Zipper, Mr. Dhurjon said that the 60-year-old while being accused of similar crimes, was never convicted.
Attorney Dhurjon went on to note that Zipper is the only breadwinner of the family and is an outstanding member of the community It was further explained that on the day in question, Joseph went to sell Zipper the product but the 60-year-old refused. It was then that he was arrested along with Joseph. Dhurjon said that his client never confessed to anything and had maintained his innocence. The Prosecutor however objected to bail based that the fact that Zipper is no stranger to the court. According to a prosecutor, on the day
in question, CANU, acting on information went to the area and saw the transaction while mounting surveillance. The Prosecutor said Gomes while being in the process of buying the drugs was caught along with the other defendant. However, in an explanation to the court, Joseph first said that he was very sorry for his action and only went to sell the drugs because he was told by some men that he would make a lot of money since he is currently poor. Joseph explained that as such, he went ahead with the transaction and later was caught in a car close
to the home. Making a decision following the guilty plea, Chief Magistrate slapped Joseph with the three-year
jail sentence, and Zipper was remanded to prison until the coming month when he will make his next court appearance.
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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