Latest update March 29th, 2024 12:59 AM
Feb 16, 2013 Editorial
The government seems to be stumbling from one controversy to the other with scarcely a break between episodes. Something like this could only happen if the advisers are people who function as though they are in total control of the minds of the people and therefore any decision they take will either find favour by the people or would simply see them reduced to an apathetic mass.
Surely no one who advises the government could make so many mistakes. Worse since there are many problematic areas, there must be many advisers and all of them are leading the government down the so-called garden path.
We start with the Marriott hotel issue and the non-employment of Guyanese. We have on many occasions stated that this state of affairs should not have existed. Recently, the government spokesman in the person of Dr. Roger Luncheon said that the non-employment of Guyanese was never an issue when the contract was signed. It must have caught the attention of the people in the Ministry of Home Affairs when the applications for work permits were submitted. From comments made by Dr. Luncheon the government was made aware of the intention of the contractor, Shanghai Construction Group, when it saw the recruitment trends.To contend that a contractor is entitled to recruit the labour force with which he is familiar does not hold water once an international force is involved. This would happen in no other country, not even the poorest country in the world. In fact, the poor country would have injected a training clause in its contracts.
The arrogance of some people and the race by others to justify this abomination is astounding. The Minister of Labour seeks to justify it by contending that Guyana does not have the requisite skills to work in the construction of the hotel. He is saying that Guyanese cannot even prepare a mixture of cement, sand and stone needed for the columns and walls and the floor.
The worst bit of bovine scatology comes from Winston Brassington. He sees nothing wrong with the non-employment on a large Guyanese project. Dr. Luncheon has said that a similar situation would not exist when works begin at the Cheddi Jagan International Airport. This is because there would have to be the movement of large quantities of sand and other building material. Of course, Dr Luncheon quipped that he could not see the Chinese moving such material.
Well the same thing needs to be done at the Marriott construction site. There is need for sand and stone and cement to be moved. Brassington, however, speaks for the Chinese contractor. He claims that they feel comfortable working with their own. To hire Guyanese, according to Brassington, would slow down the project.
The various sections of the society are now addressing this issue and unless somebody in the government lacks shame, or perhaps feel that people would only protest for a while, the situation should be resolved.
The other unnecessary disturbance in the society surrounds the granting of a television broadcast licence to the Chinese Government. The justification seems to be that about a dozen countries have granted a television broadcast licence to a foreign government. And in each case the foreign government is the Chinese government.
There are Guyanese who want a television broadcast licence but they cannot get on and some will never get because as the officials say, there is limited spectrum. If the spectrum is a scarce resource then surely the government should know that it cannot afford to dispose of a bandwidth to a foreigner ahead of its own people.
We hear that the allocation of this television channel was something that was agreed on more than a decade ago. Well even back then the government must have recognized that there were Guyanese seeking the right to broadcast. It already had the applications.
The only governments that would go such a route as the Guyana Government did would be a government chasing money at all costs, one in which some of the officials in the talks would have taken some brazen offer; or a government that simply does not care about its people. And the advisers should be the ones to blame, unless then President Bharrat Jagdeo refused to heed the words of those who had his ear.
THIS IDIOT TELLING GUYANA WE HAVE NO SAY IN THE 50% PROFIT SHARING AGREEMENT WE HAVE WITH EXXON.
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