Yearly Archives: 2024

Money come in but cost of living fly up Aug 02, 2024 Dem Boys Seh, Features / Columnists Dem Boys Seh… Kaieteur News – Dem boys seh some security guards gat a new job these days: guardin’ demself from not eating enough. De oil money come in, and everybody tink it was plenty betterment. Some guards start tekking home $120,000 a month. That’s big bucks fuh dem who been used to scraping by. But dem boys seh money come in but cost of living fly up. Now, dem guards ketching sense. Dem gat more pay, but it lookin’ like dem can’t buy more. Dem boys seh is like dem getting pay in monopoly money. De $120,000 sound nice, but de extra money nah enough fuh put more food in de food bowl. Dem boys seh some guards belly rumbling louder  because when dem eat dem dinner, by midnight dem need a lil snack and de money nah stretch fuh dis. Some of dem begging fuh a lil transportation money. Others asking fuh a small piece fuh buy green mango, just to stem de worms. Dem boys seh, “Imagine some big strong guards beggin’ like beggars!” De guards now gat another problem. De bosses dem seh no more shutting-eye pon de job. Some guards use to catch lil nap in de night shift. Now dem can’t even do that. Dem boys seh de guards gat to keep eyes wide open like dem watching action movie. No nap, no slack, no mercy. All this while dem belly crying out. And de government? Dem boys seh de government come wid deh deflated inflation numbers and talkin’ bout how de economy swellin’. But dem guards seh is de belly swelling, not de pay. Dem just wan’ know how dem gun keep dem eyes open and dem belly full. So dem boys seh, some of de guards still standing tall, even if dem standing pon empty belly. Dey guardin’ more than building and people. Dem guardin’ de truth ’bout dis so-called oil boom, and how it leaving dem dry like de well before de oil find. Talk half. Leff halk Related Similar Articles

THE OLYMPiCS Aug 02, 2024 Peeping Tom Kaieteur News – The Olympics is the world’s greatest sporting spectacle. It brings together athletes from all around the world to compete against one another and for personal and national glory. The Games show the extraordinary limits to which human endurance and performance can be pushed. It almost brings tears to my eyes witnessing the breathtaking performances which are turned out every four years. Part of the traditional appeal of the Olympics has been its amateur status. But that is no more and the Games are now being made sour by the presence of professional athletes. The introduction of professionals into the Games is a violation of the Olympic spirit – the spirit of amateur competition. When professionals are allowed to take part in the Games in the disciplines of football, lawn tennis and basketball it makes a mockery of the Olympics. I do not think this should have been allowed to happen. The Olympics has for a long time been an amateur sport. It emerged as a contest between states in which all are equal. In reality of course countries with professional leagues tend to have the better athletes. The Olympics, as originally conceived, levelled the playing field and made it possible for weaker and smaller states to shine in the international limelight. In 1986, the decision was taken to admit professional athletes. This change resulted from pressure from commercial sponsors. In the process, the Olympic Games moved from being primary an Olympic sport to a commercial enterprise and because of this it was felt that there was a need to attract superstars to make the Games more appealing to sponsors. The introduction of professional athletes contaminated the Olympic spirit. Sometimes you wonder whether the athletes are running, swimming, leaping or somersaulting for their country or for their sponsors and for future endorsements. As someone once said, competing in the Olympics was about pride and glory for yourself and country not about money or power. And it simply is unfair to ask amateur athletes, particularly from poor countries to compete with professionals in developed countries who earn seven figure sums. It is like asking the Guyana basketball team to compete against an all-star team from the NBA. Competition in certain sports such as basketball, soccer and lawn tennis has never been as imbalanced in the Olympics as it is today. Since 1992 at Barcelona, the United States, stacked with NBA superstars, has won the basketball in six of the seven Olympics. That 1992 US basketball team is often referred to as the Dream Team. By common consensus it is considered the greatest basketball teams ever assembled. How can you ask amateurs to compete against such teams? No wonder the Dream Team has been so consistent in steamrolling the Opposition. The introduction of professions made the margin of victories lopsided. For example, the Dream Team from the USA defeated Croatia 117-85 in the 1992 finals. Imagine what would have happened if Olympic boxing had allowed professionals. Imagine Mike Tyson fighting at the Olympic Games. Fortunately, boxing is one of those sports in which professionals cannot enter. The admission of professional tennis, soccer and basketball players vulgarizes the Olympic spirit; it turns those events into a parody. Opening the Games to professional athletes also denies amateur athletes the opportunity that they should have to compete and win Olympic glory. As such, I never look at Olympic basketball, football and tennis. I do not believe that now that professional athletes have tasted Olympic glory that these particular Olympic sporting disciplines will ever return to being exclusively for amateur. I am not original in this criticism. It was made years ago, by Cuban President Fidel Castro. In fact, it is bitterly tragic that while professional athletes are increasingly invading the games, baseball is still not a permanent Olympic sport. This year, it is not being contested. I would not like to live to see the day when cricket joins the fray because it would mean that the sports premier competition, Cricket World Cup, would have to give way to the Olympics. It would not just be right. Nor should it. (The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.) Related Similar Articles

Emancipation – so many freedoms taken away, missing Aug 02, 2024 Editorial Editorial… Kaieteur News – Emancipation in its smallest significance is about freedom.  There are many facets to this freedom, many freedoms for citizens in a country, none of which must be restrained.  For when taken one by one in a country, no one, no matter how powerful, no entity, no matter how dominant, should impair those precious freedoms through caprices or artifices.  However poor or powerful, however he or she is found acceptable or objectionable, the freedom of the individual must not be shackled, nor any attempt be made to do so. The only qualifier, the only restraint, is that any freedom must yield to the requirements of just laws.  This is what we at this paper believe the Emancipation of man, anything that can be defined as truly emancipatory, is at its core. When there is Emancipation in its fullest forms, there is no place for government tyranny.  Not even the smallest fissure should be created for such tyranny to shelter.  We would betray truth were it to be said that government tyranny does not exist in Guyana today, in this its era of the greatest promise.  This, we regret.  It is to our immense regret also that the freedoms that real Emancipation foster are now subject to revolting leadership tyrannies.  When political leaders are constrained by artificial circumstances of their own making to speak with clarion clarity, then they have done something, made some arrangement that tyrannizes their already fragile hold on frankness, unambiguousness. When leaders dissemble, they have yoked themselves to some tyranny.  When leaders are cornered for straight answers and they find every excuse not to give them, then they are not emancipated, they exist under a harness that controls and steers even what they are free to say.  Those are not leaders that know what it is to be emancipated, or even ones that appreciate the workings of democracy’s ideals.  It is of leaders who have allowed himself to be duct taped, consumed by some selfishness, for the return of some cheap, low-quality oats.  When leaders retreat from providing honest answers to simple questions, retaliate with an outpouring of vitriolic abuse, that is tyranny not emancipation.  When leaders are vicious and vindictive towards those exercising the rights of citizens, or performing the duties of professionals, then that is one more expression of tyranny.  The unvarnished truth is that leaders living and operating with the fullest strengths of complete emancipation are free, have freed themselves, from any inhibition that controls their tongue, manages their minds.  We invite honest thinkers, the free thinkers in Guyana, to check what we have in our leaders and how they are, then to decide for themselves whether they are emancipated or whether they are enslaved. Emancipation at its brightest is the freedom to participate fairly and fairly in the national natural resources’ patrimonies, with none bigger and more beautiful than the national oil patrimony.  When any single citizen of Guyana, little one or big one, poor one or rich one, is prevented in some manner from that fullness and fairness of participation, then that can never represent emancipation.  We shall say it loud, and we say it clear: any limitation to enjoy the fruits of the national oil harvest is not emancipation at its truest.  It is an abomination at its vilest, it most decayed.  Being defined as the richest people in the world is an emancipation of an unequalled kind.  What Guyanese live with, however, are the manacles of poverty: they trap tightly, they bite deeply and painfully.  When a government is for the people, then it fights to its last breath for those same people, all of them.  Neither government nor any of its leaders make it a point or practice to obfuscate with the facts, or retaliate with venom, or prevaricate with a stream of deceptions. The incomparable national oil patrimony (plus other components of it) is the key to the emancipation that all impoverished Guyanese have yearned for, waited on, so long.  This is the time of emancipation without condition.  This is the time for Guyanese to enjoy true economic freedom.  Guyanese are going to have to rise for the freedom that is now denied them but is due to them. Related Similar Articles

Labour Minister urges private sector to give apprenticeships to youth trained by Ministry Aug 02, 2024 News Some of the participants of the Learning Business by Doing Business (LBDB) initiative with Labour Minister Joseph Hamilton and other officials. Kaieteur News – Minister of Labour, Joseph Hamilton, on Wednesday, urged Guyana’s private sector to supplement the government’s efforts to increase the employability of the nation’s youth. The comments came while the Minister was delivering his remarks at the launch of the Guyana Ignite Project. The project is a Learning Business by Doing Business (LBDB) initiative by the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Youth Resilience, Inclusion, and Empowerment (Y-RIE) program. Its goal is to provide training and mentorship, and subsequently facilitate employment or investment, for youth 16-25 years of age from the Sophia, Werk-en-Rust, Albouystown, and New Amsterdam areas. This initiative, which is a partnership with Male Empowerment Network (M.E.N.), will directly benefit Guyana’s workforce and the target communities by improving the employability and entrepreneurial skill of its young participants. Minister Hamilton took the opportunity to urge the private sector to invest in apprenticeship programs in order to develop long-term employees for the benefit of their respective companies and the workforce. “I’m saying to the private sector, while we’re here, these people we train is for you! So you have to give us support. Apprenticeship programs, where you can develop monthly employees, you have to spend some money there,” he said. He proceeded to highlight the disconnect between the private sector’s desire for skilled labour and its contribution to the development of the workforce. “The data from our National Apprenticeship showed limited private sector involvement… the private sector is on me: ‘We need so many of this [profession], we need some…’ Where you think they coming from, heaven?!” Finally, he implored that they offer their assistance and resources to the Guyana Ignite Project in ways that would directly benefit the young participants. “So I call out on the private sector to open their businesses to ensure the success and expansion of this initiative, I call upon our private sector partners to open their businesses for the exposure tours, volunteer their time as mentors, and engage more deeply with our programs,” Hamilton said. Meanwhile, Richard Collymore, Coordinator of the Ignite Project and founder of the Male Empowerment Network, urged the youth to take a chance on both themselves and the Ignite initiative, and put their all into the next several weeks of training. Other speakers at the launch included Tiffany Daniels, Guyana’s Y-RIE Country Director who explained the role that USAID and its Y-RIE program intend to play in the life of Guyana’s youth. Adrienne Galanek, Charge d’Affaires of the US Embassy to Guyana, and Marlon Joseph, President of the Together We Win Business Network, also attended the event and gave brief remarks. Additionally, a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was signed by representatives of the USAID Y-RIE program and the Ministry of Labour’s Board of Industrial Training. The participants of the program expressed a readiness and willingness to improve themselves via the program, which will run for a total of 10 weeks. “I hope to gain the skills to become a welder. So I will come every day and take in everything that they teach so that I can get my degree and become a welder,” 18-year-old Samuel Allen told Kaieteur News. Another Ignite Project participant, 21-year-old Annalisa James, told this publication, “I see myself doing electrician, carpentry, and plumbing work mostly. I will try my best to bring as much as I can to the project, but other than that I will just learn as much as I can. I need to do this because I see myself doing something more in the future, and that’s what I’m looking for, for myself in the future.” Related Similar Articles

PPP Govt. – an int’l obscenity, an entity that fears truth, light Aug 02, 2024 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column Hard Truths by GHK Lall Kaieteur News – There are some hard truths that all Guyanese must face up to, particularly PPP Government supporters.  The leadership of the party and national government is now an international obscenity, mocks democracy, defaces even the smallest standards.  Except for a handful in its leadership cohort, this is the PPP: a group that races from anything that has to do with truth, what represents the light that Guyana needs.  A million miles of roads do not speak to the pure truth; their twisted truths are buried in their tombs.  Nor can all the local building hideaway the decayed nature of a government and party gone wild, now rickety and sordid from an excess of power.  Here are some hard truths for Guyanese to savor; they are about how hard the PPP Government and leadership endeavor to bring down conscientious objectors, stifle dissent, frighten citizens. The PPP Government and leadership try state media.  They fail.  The PPP Government and leadership work through social media.  They keep losing.  The PPP Government and leadership use private media, dark media, underground media with the same result: defeat and disgrace.  What is the objective?  To intimidate, to browbeat, to corner and kill off honest commentary, to suppress thinking.  I am honored to be targeted by all those media and media operators.  So much manpower, so much money, spent to derogate and deny one man (a few women, a few others of Guyanese heritage) from speaking their minds, for spreading some light.  On oil.  About governance.  Relative to transparent leadership.  When the indefensible becomes the norm, PPP agents are consumed with what next will be written, what issues bared.  They watch, they rail up, they stain themselves, rush for dark holes.  This is how I invade the heads of government leaders and their minions, control their minds. Because the PPP Government and leadership cannot stand the light of truth, both seek shelter in deep darkness.   What kind of government runs from truth, hides behind extravagant falsehoods, slink towards darkness?  What does it say of the servants and their leaders that they have such a morbid dread of truth and light that they seek refuge behind high fences, higher government offices, and the grossest deceptions?  From life, we all know what those who have terrible secrets to conceal do.  They cannot face honest people.  They can’t deal with straight talk, so they steal away and twist things that expose their vulgar character, their corruption practices that diminish this nation so much.  So, they disappear behind thick bushes to bushwhack law-abiding Guyanese exercising their sacred Constitutional rights to speak and write what they think, how they assess developments.  Not as a government or any cult leaders push them to see it.  But as they see what is really going on in Guyana and care enough to expound upon such, come what may.  By way of slight digression: PPP defenders who are ignorant of what bushwhack means can check with Mr. Alistair Routledge; it is the lingo of Texas. For years, a few intrepid citizens have appealed to president, vice president, minister: do something, about those masquerades from Exxon passed off as public consultations on pending oil projects.  Now there is movement: government will attend, listen, check things out; plus, the startling admission that “stupidness” could be in operation.  Some Guyanese boldly pointed out that Exxon’s billboards deceive citizens.  Immediately, government defensive postures were trotted out (by Guyanese collecting Exxon’s money) in efforts to persuade locals that all is well.  Recently, after nonstop highlighting that Exxon’s billboards are misleading, there is belated agreement from the political mandarin in charge of the oil.  The billboards are wrong.  Why only now?  Why so long?  Why not listen to citizens who only want the best from oil for this country. Government and leadership can collect the accolades.  But the leadership is so consumed by the destructive poisons of power that there is no listening, only wasting of time trying to whip messengers with unwanted messages into submission. The latest example of the PPP Government’s fear of light and truth is related to a simple question: how many new barrels of oil have been found in Exxon’s last eight discoveries?  The usual cover-ups from both government and leaders came and stayed.  Exxon is focused on monetizing the already discovered oil assets.  Perhaps, the company was keeping those millions of barrels as strategic reserve, not selling them (marketing, monetizing) to rake in the billions.  The follow-up answer to that same question was that appraisals take time, as long as years, on occasion.  In the past, Exxon had announced new oil discoveries, and was enough of a frank partner to share its estimates of new barrels.  But then came the stonewalling under different disguises (monetizing and appraisal time needed).  Now, Guyana’s oil boss, Vice President Jagdeo announced that Guyanese will be given the new current reserves (barrels) within a week.  Why was there delay and dissembling before?  What caused the change of heart: public clamor from the usual naysayers’ sources, deviationist voices and keyboards?  My hope is that it is an all-inclusive number, and not some fabricated one. The last hard truth is this: if there was no calling out, no objection, no disagreement, then nothing would have changed.  The PPP Government and leadership would still be stuffing down Guyanese throats that all is as they say, everything is clean and straight.  My last word to President Ali and VP Jagdeo is stop bludgeoning Guyanese who want what is right and fair from their patrimonies.  To fight and try to foul from behind fowl pens only smears the record of the PPP Government, the standing of its leadership cohort, confirming the obscenity and putridity of both internationally. Related Similar Articles

Man injured as cars collide on Linden Highway Aug 02, 2024 News Kaieteur News – Police are investigating a ‘serious accident’ which occurred on Tuesday evening,  on the Soesdyke Linden Highway, resulting in one person being hospitalised with a ‘fractured backbone’. The accident involved motorcar #PAB 1807, owned and driven by Seon Sagon, a 40-year-old of Yarrowkabra Village, Soesdyke/Linden Highway, and motorcar #PYY 6817, owned and driven by Michael Major, a 26-year-old  from Silver Hill, Soesdyke/Linden Highway, and occupant Joel Howell, a 23-year-old from Amelia’s Ward Linden. Enquiries disclosed that motor car #PAB 1807 was proceeding south along the eastern side of the highway when the driver of PYY 6817, which was proceeding behind in the same direction, started to overtake PAB 1807.  Police said in a press release that in the process, the vehicles collided, and both drivers, along with the occupant, suffered injuries. They were taken out of their respective cars, placed in a Police vehicle and escorted to the Diamond Hospital, where they were seen and examined by a doctor on duty. Major and Howell were treated and sent away. The driver of PAB 1807, Seon Sagon, was referred to the Georgetown Public Hospital, where he was further examined by a doctor on duty and was admitted as a patient suffering from a fractured backbone. Related Similar Articles

VMFA U12’s off to Trinidad for International tourney Aug 02, 2024 Sports Vurlon Mills Football Academy U12’s at the CJIA yesterday ahead of departure to Port of Spain. Kaieteur News – Former national footballer and founder of Vurlon Mills Football Academy along with a 16-member squad have departed local shores yesterday headed for Trinidad and Tobago to compete at the Athletic International Academy (AIA) Summer Cup invitational 2024. A spirited group of Under-12 players along with four support staff will be in Port of Spain from August 1-4. The tournament will provide a valuable opportunity for the young players to test their skills against international competition. The VMFA boys will be in action today from 2pm at the Eddie Hart Stadium. The selected players for the tournament include; Davin Smith, Leslie Khan, Noel Persaud, Aderemi Simon, Adiel Hamilton, Lamar Lovell, Jarell Mendonca, Dontay Kowlessar, Wyatt Fernandes, Omari St.Hill, Fabio Kowlessar, Tyrese Robinson, Raheem Gill, Godfrey Greaves, Avion Lynch and Simeon Devonish. Coaches Vurlon Mills, Oshazay Savory, and Wheatland Fordyce accompany the team, and Marisha Fernandes serves as the Team Manager. Related Aderemi Simon, Adiel Hamilton, Avion Lynch and Simeon Devonish, Davin Smith, Dontay Kowlessar, Fabio Kowlessar, Godfrey Greaves, Jarell Mendonca, Lamar Lovell, Leslie Khan, Noel Persaud, Omari St.Hill, Raheem Gill, Tyrese Robinson, Wyatt Fernandes Similar Articles