Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:35 AM
Aug 29, 2021 Letters
Dear Editor,
Within the next three (3) months, it will be one year since the PPP/C Government terminated the BK International company’s contract to construct the Yarrowkabra Secondary School and the access road from the Linden/Soesdyke Highway. This incomplete project continues to deny our students access to proper educational facilities, which you would be aware as former Chair of the PAC, was budgeted since 2019. I must say this, even before taking up the reins of government in 2020, your party had stated pellucidly that educating the children of Guyana was going to be a top priority, yet for reasons, which are unclear, there has been no more progress on the completion of this school. I am aware, however, that the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic may have contributed to the delay.
Mr. President, I truly hesitate to state the opinion of some that this apparent delay has political overtones particularly since the majority of residents of this community support the now Opposition. This community was established in 1973 and designated an NDC area in 1990. Over the years, both the PPP/C and PNC Governments had distributed over 1,800 house lots and hundreds of acres of farmland, but the necessary infrastructure development plan was never activated by the PPP/C since it came into power in 1992. The local government authority was also not established to push the necessary developmental programmers, but it was later set up through our own persistence.
After my own election as an AFC Councillor of the Region Four RDC in 2006, other Council members and I made numerous approaches to the sitting government for Primary and Secondary schools to be built, and for updating of the electricity and potable water networks. However, between 2006 and 2015, our pleas fell on deaf ears. Then there was not enough time for the Coalition to execute its plans to improve the community’s infrastructure. Please note that the community itself was stagnated mainly because the new house lot awardees could not begin to construct their buildings due to this vital shortcoming – no water, no electricity, no school. And now, many stand to lose their housing allocations because they have not started to build.
Please note, Mr. President, that the cost of sending our children miles away to school in Soesdyke has always been too high for one, much less five children from one household. During the decade of the ’70s, plans were being made to relocate the seat of Government and its accompanying agencies to higher ground along the highway, to build new infrastructure and develop the villages located along that corridor. Those plans were made in recognition of the foreseeable threat, even then, of the imminent rise in sea levels. This is now our reality. Today, the villagers of the Yarrowkabra community are questioning why the school contract was terminated and no effort has been made to inform them of such. They believe that they are being discriminated against, since it has now been more than nine (9) months since the contract was terminated and there is still no word from the Ministry of Education. The people cite Article 13 of Guyana’s Constitution which stated: The principal objective of the political system of the State is to establish an inclusionary democracy by providing increasing opportunities for the participation of citizens, and their organisations in the management and decision-making process of the State, with particular emphasis on those areas of decision-making that directly affect their well-being.
Mr. President we, the villagers of Yarrowkabra, would like to be told unequivocally when construction of the school would resume. Better than that, we ask you to utilise your executive authority and have this very necessary school built to completion. The PPP/C says every day that it is a government for all of Guyana. Please show us that this is not lip service. We depend on you living up to your promises, and we look forward to a visit from the relevant education or public works official in the near future.
Michael Carrington,
Former MP
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