One more order, Jagdeo!
Kaieteur News
January 3, 2005
The New Year broke me with my plate of cook-up in front of my television engrossed in the celebrations in Time Square. New York is one hour behind Guyana at this time of the year and so at the stroke of midnight, local time, New Yorkers were counting down the final hour to their New Year.
Just as their clock ticked to eleven, Guyana's clock struck midnight and 2005 begun. On the dot, the state-owned NCN began airing the president's speech at the same time that another channel began airing that of the leader of the opposition. The president was good this year. I liked his relaxed tone. I was glad that he did not boast about the bumper sugar crop which one newspaper said was the highest since 1990. Something has to be wrong here because 1989 was one of the worst years for production in Guyana and while production would have increased in 1990, that year's output must have been surpassed umpteenth times since. I liked the general tone of the President's speech. He did not go overboard in boasting about how rosy things are or will be in the New Year. He simply wished people well, urged them to do better this year and work with him to improve Guyana. And very astutely, he identified with a number of problems facing Guyanese, which he blamed on bad attitudes of some public officials. This was a smart presentation by the president, smooth and suited to the New Year mood. The same could not be said of his opposite number, the leader of the opposition. His presentation was even longer than the president's and his essential focus was to empathize with Guyanese whom he feels are undergoing hard times, never mind a lot of people in Guyana bought expensive jewellery for their loved ones. You do not expect an opposition leader to paint a rosy picture but the lengths to which Corbin went, really spoiled the usual celebratory mood. After listening to him, I began to wonder whether I was not eating too much while so many in the country were hungry. That was the end of my traditional Old Year's night plate of cook-up. In his address to the nation, Corbin once again made a call for Guyanese to come together to create a model of governance that would take our country forward. This campaign to bring people together under the tent of the main opposition is not working. Last year in my articles, I dealt extensively with it and it seems that the PNCR has so far failed to attract takers to its programme. The PNCR has got to decide how long it will continue to cry out “like a voice in the wilderness” and just when it will get down to the serious task of deciding who will be the party's presidential candidate in the next election. But back to the president's message. He did state that he had given orders to the Minister of Education to check to see whether parents were being forced to pay for services they ought to be getting free. There is one other order I would like to ask him to give to the same minister. But before I state it, let me provide some background. The Ministry of Education has decided that it will not be rebuilding the Sacred Heart Primary School at its present location. This is a decision I support because of those attending that institution as at the time of the Christmas Day fire, only about one third were from the catchments area. Since this school caters for the primary level, it means that this situation developed over the past six years, when there was in place a points system to determine school placements. This column has repeatedly called for an audit to be done of all of the country's top primary schools so as to test the integrity of the placement system. Doing this will also have other benefits, for as we have seen now, the ministry has determined there is no longer a need for a new primary school to be rebuilt on location. The Minister of Education has also said the system for awarding points based on the workplace of parents would be reviewed. My question is, why only now? Why did it have to take a fire that completely destroyed a new school for this review to take place? Most of the employment in the city is concentrated in a certain geographical block and therefore once you work downtown, your child would score points to attend certain schools in the northern part of the city. And boy, do thousands work in that section of the city?! The new system must be more community-based. Children must be forced to go to the schools within their communities. This system must be put in place in time for the new school year beginning in September. The Minister of Education has done something good here in announcing the review. But he should go further and do an audit of most of the top primary schools in the country, so as to determine whether the vast majority of children of those schools reside in the catchments area. The ministry came to its determination about the Sacred Heart School by examining its records within the ministry, and it did this very quickly. I am sure that in matter of days it can tell us just what percentage of those attending other top primary schools are from outside of the catchments areas.
I urge the president to give the order for this survey to be done and published. Kaieteur News will publish the results free of cost. In his New Year's message, the president sounded very concerned when ordinary people suffer. I am therefore appealing to him, to let us through this simple exercise straighten out this issue about the school placement system for primary schools.