Confused confusion
Kaieteur News – The PPP / C and the APNU, when they were in Opposition, had said they will stand with the government to defend the country’s territorial integrity. Unsurprisingly, following the seizure and detention of two Guyanese fishing vessels by the Venezuelan navy, the Minister for Foreign Affairs met with his Opposition counterpart to brief him on the efforts being made to ensure that the crews released. from the ships and to draw the attention of the international community to the breach of Guyana’s maritime territory.
Arising from that meeting, it was reported that the opposition’s partner had “underlined the need for the administration to embark on a public education campaign so that all Guyanese men, women and children can properly understand and articulate Guyana’s position as it stands. is about Venezuela’s outspoken claims. ”
This suggestion was all that the government needed to distribute a public education contract. There will be no calls for this public education contract to be the subject of a competitive tender. Most likely, it will be treated as a matter of national urgency and the government will issue a multi-million dollar contract to ensure that all men, women and children can shout “not a blade of grass”.
This is ridiculous nonsense. Guyanese do not need a public education program to enlighten them that the Essequibo belongs to Guyana and that the 1899 Arbitration Award represents a full, final and definitive settlement of the territorial issue between Guyana and Venezuela.
A child is unaware of Dave Martins ‘Not a Blade of Grass’ hits. Whenever this song is played in public, Guyanese, young and old, sing in tune. Guyanese are not divided on this question. All it takes is for a Dave Martins song to be played on the radio a few times each day.
So there was no real need for the Opposition representative to give any credence to this suggestion for a public education program. And even if members of the public needed to be enlightened about the territorial issue, this could easily have been done by the state-owned National Communications Network (NCN).
Why hire a private company when the state-owned media machines are available to the government? Why waste valuable resources, which can be better used to curb the COVID-19 coronavirus.
Nearly 11 months after the start of the coronavirus in Guyana, the Ministry of Health is now reporting that a study is being commissioned into the local trends of the pandemic. Can you believe this nonsense?
What was the basis on which the Ministry of Health and Task Force COVID-19 made assessments and recommendations? Did it collect detailed statistics on the incidence and consequent deaths, apart from the daily thread COVID-19 bulletin? Didn’t the Ministry of Health monitor the trends?
Can it provide a regional breakdown of deaths? Can it provide an ethnic breakdown of the people who died? Can it disaggregate total tests by region? Aren’t these indicators fundamental to doing the epidemiological assessment, which is required to inform the national and regional strategies?
So far, the media has failed to ask the Health Minister to identify the names of the epidemiologists advising him on the issue and what their models suggest? How can the public have confidence in the government’s handling of the pandemic when it has not been more transparent than APNU + AFC?
When the government reported that 20,000 antigen tests were being ordered, this column suggested that, as was the case in New York during the early months of the pandemic, randomized tests should be carried out. These randomized tests would have allowed a determination of the number of potential national outbreaks of the disease. It would have allowed the Ministry to project the percentage of the population who were infected or who were infected.
It is surprising to hear now that a trend study is being conducted in collaboration with the Pan American Institute of Health and Harvard University. Why do we need these organizations to help us do a COVID-19 trend study?
This should have been an ongoing exercise conducted by the personnel in the Ministry of Health but instead of hiring competent people who can do these tests, what we have across government is all sorts of political appointments.
The media learned last Sunday at the Annual Media Brunch that the Press Secretary and Deputy Press Secretary were in the Presidency Office. We may soon have a Secretary of State and Chief of Staff of the Presidency.
(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of this newspaper.)