Saturday March 07, 2015
Kaieteur News
Page 23
Letters... Where your views make the news
Kuru Kururu accident The days when Amerindians were leaves student critical, fooled and taken for granted are over logger with broken jaw
DEAR EDITOR, I recently visited a number of hinterland communities in Region Nine, including the village of Aishalton in the Deep South. The pace of development in the communities visited is very much in evidence. The time taken to travel from Lethem to Aishalton by trail is considerably reduced, thanks to regular maintenance works done by the regional administration. Most of the communities now have lights powered by diesel generators or solar panels. These villages have taken on a new appearance with the several infrastructural works undertaken by the PPP/C
administration. New nursery, primary and secondary schools, health centres and huts, learning resource centres and recreational facilities, have literally changed the landscape in almost all Amerindian and hinterland communities. Region Nine has seen the construction of several new secondary schools, including at Aishalton, Annai and Sand Creek, with dormitory facilities to cater for students from the outlying villages. Our Amerindian children are doing much better in school today. The performance gap between hinterland schools and those on the coast have been greatly reduced.
Residents are highly appreciative of the developmental projects undertaken by the PPP/C regime, despite attempts by the opposition parties to block funding for several other interventions including land titling, solar panels and the development of information and communication technology. It is clear that there has been a significant reduction in the developmental gap between Amerindian communities and the rest of the country, thanks to vastly improved information and communication infrastructure and the massive infrastructural works undertaken by the PPP/C
administration. Cell phones have now become commonplace in several communities, which makes it much easier for information-sharing and processing. The days when Amerindians were fooled and taken for granted are over, and no amount of opposition propaganda can erase the fact that the quality of life among the Amerindian and hinterland communities are today much better than under the previous PNC regime. True enough there are still many challenges to overcome, but it is not the power to achieve but the will to conquer that matters. Hydar Ally
Democracy has benefited the... From page 4 “authoritarian” regime over democratic government if authoritarianism could “resolve” their economic problems. Almost all of Latin America is living under a democracy, but the people are not contended and seem willing to have a benevolent dictator. In contrast, we in the Caribbean are hyper-concerned about democracy. The swift reaction to the slow transition of government in St Kitts and Nevis demonstrates that point. Almost immediately the Caribbean community reacted. I read articles within a week, in about ten Caribbean countries, expressing their discontent with the apparent attempt to hold on to power. I agree with the concerns, however, we in the Caribbean seem to be more concerned about democracy rather than quality of life. Has democracy made every single citizen of Caricom have enough food to eat, get a quality education and have a living wage after completion of school? I would like to argue that any system that does not do that - have the maximum wellbeing of all its citizens, has failed or at best has to achieve its final outcome - in other words is a work in progress. There is competition between China and the United States of America. At the 2014 APEC Summit of Pacific Rim countries, China attempted negotiations on a regional agreement, the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific. This was hindered by the US which supports the TransPacific Partnership (TPP), a trade agreement that excludes China. China considers the
TPP an instrument of its containment by the US and has responded with the ChinaASEAN Free Trade Area involving Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam. In 2014, China’s President Xi Jingping met with the Caribbean Community in Trinidad and Tobago and shortly before US Vice President Joe Biden met with Caricom. Most Caribbean leaders and the general populace will tend to favour the US. We get US television and a lot of our relatives live there and we natural have a cultural bias being products of a western education system. A number of concerns expressed were about China’s cultural values with regard to democracy and human rights. Again, we must understand that all countries throughout civilization go through social and economic developments that are correlated. China is going through a similar process. The fact that China amended its constitution in 1982, 1988, 1993 and 1999, supports the assertion that it is going through political, economic and social changes simultaneously. The media report of Chinese dissidence such as in Tiananmen Square is a sign of social progress. I view Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X as US dissidents. The US is still the world’s leading country, but Russia will not allow Ukraine to join NATO. According to the Moscow Times, President Vladimir Putin’s March 18, 2014 speech announcing the annexation of Crimea was similar to US objecting to missiles being place in Cuba in 1962. Arguing that Russia was forced to annex Crimea to
forestall the possibility of Ukraine joining NATO, Putin asserted that the West “had lied to us many times”. Al-Qaida and ISIS are also determined to create their own global order. Choosing sides should not be our concern, but doing what is in our best interest, and it does not have to be in the more powerful country’s best interest. History has shown that it does not matter who the colonizer is, they will look after themselves at the expense of the colonized. Today we not only face countries, but transnational corporations that are more powerful than many countries. We in Guyana, the Caribbean and Latin America must be determined to live a good quality of life. We can’t only be obsessed with ideology such as communism, capitalism and democracy. If democracy is not delivering a good quality of life for its citizens, either it is not genuine democracy or democracy is not omnipotent, or both. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. If the majority of people in a country are poor and powerless, then that system is not in the best interest of the nation. In 507 BC Cleisthenes put into effect in Greece the world’s first democratic constitution. In 1215 King John of England was forced to sign the Magna Carta. This Great Charter stated that a king would no longer collect taxes unless the Great Council agreed and freeman accused had the right to trail by their peers or equal. This was a monumental step toward democracy, because it made everyone subject to the law. The peril of modern democracy is a great number of
developing nations are not producing enough food to feed their people and buy it elsewhere. They do not have enough money to provide decent housing, health care and education for their citizens. Democracy is meant to produce equality and prosperity for all, but it has failed to do that in the developing world. I am in support of democracy in Guyana and all countries, but not an ineffective model. In every developing country you have very rich persons who sometimes throw away food, while some people don’t even have enough food. My basic argument is that democracy has benefited the few and to be a genuine democracy it must benefit all, with a good quality of life. Brian E Plummer
A Wednesday afternoon collision has landed third form Dora Secondary School student, 15-year-old Richard Paramdeo, aka ‘Black Boy’, and 23-year-old logger, Travis Anthony Simeon’ at the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation (GPHC) fighting for their lives. The teen is said to be on life support, in critical condition in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) of the hospital, while Simeon is recovering from internal injuries, and a jaw that has been broken in three places. This newspaper understands that Paramdeo had just left school and was making his way to his Lot 192 Kuru Kururu, Soesdyke Linden Highway home on his bicycle when he collided with Simeon’s motorbike. The accident occurred in the vicinity of the Kuru Kururu cemetery. The teen’s mother, Babita Ramdin explained that she was at the creek washing when her husband got a call that her eldest son had just been in an accident. The woman related, “Just after 5:00, me husband was at home when he get a call saying Black Boy (Richard) get in accident with a motorbike…So he come and tell me Black Boy get knock down…Then the people call me and seh me gotta hurryup because the child deh bad”. Paramdeo never regained consciousness. Tears began to settle in Ramdin’s eyes, as she told this newspaper that people from the area picked up the injured teen and took him to the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) medical outpost at
Timehri. The teen was then transferred to the Diamond Diagnostic Centre, before being transferred to the ICU of GPHC. One of the child’s relatives related that although he has been responding to touch, there is still a 50/50 chance that the youth will not make it. His visibly upset mother kept saying “he deh real bad”. This newspaper understands that the child suffered a few broken bones, and severe head injury. Meanwhile, lots of family members and friends flocked Simeon’s bedside in the male surgical ward at GPHC. The injuries he sustained to his face made it difficult for him to speak. He was forced to place a towel over his face, in order to hide the disfigurement of his mouth and jaw. In his account of what transpired on Wednesday last, Simeon said that he was riding his motorbike along the burial ground road in Kuru Kururu, when he spotted the child on his bicycle. He claims that he paid the child no mind, but then the Dora Secondary School student suddenly swerved into his path, following which everything went blank. Simeon appeared emotional, and was constantly asking for a report on Paramdeo’s condition. This newspaper understands that a few children were playing cricket on the road, and they are the only ones who are aware of what exactly occurred on Wednesday afternoon. They are yet to come forward with that information.