Almost one year after the passage of the No-Confidence Motion (NCM) against the coalition government, the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) is only now scrambling to fill a number of key posts, with only five months remaining before next year’s March 2 polling day. This is according to Government-nominated Commissioner at GECOM, Vincent Alexander who told reporters, following Tuesday’s three-hour statutory meeting, that they have advanced certain aspects of the Commission’s work. This, he noted, includes reactivating the work of the admin committee to look at a number of vacancies that…
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19% of prison inmates in Guyana between 18 and 30 years
…rehabilitation a critical part of Prison Service mandate – Director Presently, there are 1917 inmates housed in the various penitentiaries across the country in Guyana. Of this amount, 371 (19 per cent) are persons between the ages of 18 and 30 years. This is according to Director of Prisons, Gladwin Samuels, who on the occasion of the Guyana Prison Service’s 136th anniversary celebrations stated that of that 19 per cent, there are 354 males and 17 females. Of that total, 62 prisoners (17 per cent) are serving time behind…
Read More19-yr-old arraigned for murder of NDC Clerk
Nineteen-year-old Rollan Abrams, of Melanie, East Coast Demerara, was on Tuesday arraigned for the murder of David Gentle, whose body was found lying motionless in a pool of blood near his bicycle at Haslington, ECD. Abrams was not required to plead to the indictable charge when he appeared at the Cove and John Magistrate’s Court. The Police stated that on September 2, 2019, Abrams murdered 58-year-old Gentle. He was remanded to prison by presiding Magistrate Fabayo Azore and was scheduled to make his next court appearance on October 22, 2019.…
Read MoreThe dilemma of Guyanese political parties
As we approach elections, many new parties calling themselves “multiracial”, will be formed to “solve” our political logjam. I offer an observation made a year before our historical free and fair elections that were supposed to usher in a new age of democracy in Guyana. It is still valid. “Whatever their faults, our parties, like parties everywhere, do not merely affect, they also reflect the nuances of their societies. So the fault, dear friends, might also lie in ourselves. Politicians cannot lead followers wherever the politicians want them to go,…
Read MoreWaitress gets 6 months for stealing phone
A waitress who was charged for assaulting a man and then stealing his cellphone was on Friday found guilty of stealing the cellphone and was sentenced for that offence. Twenty-five-year-old Sherryann Marks, of Lot 123 Middle Road, La Penitence, Georgetown, pleaded not guilty to the charge which stated that on July 31, 2019, at Vlissengen Road, Georgetown, she stole one Alcatel cellphone valued at G$60,000, property of Collin Woolford. During her address to the court, Marks claimed that she walked away with the phone by mistake and was not given…
Read MoreOil refinery to be completed by next year – GuyEnergy executive
– to be based in Linden; have 4000 BPD start-up capacity GuyEnergy, the company that had publicly announced its intention to build an oil refinery in Guyana since last year, is on course to completing its refinery by next year. This is according its Chief Executive Officer, Dr Turhane Doerga. According to Dr Doerga in an interview with this publication over the weekend, the company is at the stage where the modules for the oil refinery are being built. And according to Dr Doerga, who is also well known…
Read MoreToshaos urged to seek tangible solutions for communities
The National Toshaos Conference got underway on Monday, with National Toshaos Council (NTC) Chairman, Nicholas Fredericks urging the village leaders from across the country to put aside differences and focus on seeking tangible solutions for their respective constituencies. The conference, which usually goes for five days, got underway at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre on Monday morning. Fredericks made this call during the opening ceremony of the conference, which was also attended by President David Granger, his Ministers and the Opposition. “Toshaos, I urge you to continue to make that…
Read MoreSaving the democratic transition
On October 5, 1992, with the return of “free and fair elections”, Guyana joined what the Harvard scholar Samuel Huntington had only the year before dubbed “The Third Wave: Democratisation in the late 20th century”. Referring to the initial wave in the 18th and 19th century led by the US and France, and the second in the decolonisation era following WWII, Huntington noted the structural factors that undergirded the third wave after authoritarian relapses in the preceding decades. For Guyana, the external factor was the fall of the Berlin Wall,…
Read MoreBody of 9-year-old pulled from Linden creek
The body of nine-year-old Imani Leech was on Monday retrieved from Kara Kara Creek at Mackenzie, Linden, following a search led by residents of the neighbouring Speightland community. Leech went missing after he fell into a section of the Kara Kara Creek in Region 10 (Upper Demerara-Berbice) on Saturday. His partially decomposed body was discovered floating in a section of the Creek at approximately 12:30h on Monday after residents who formed a search party ventured out by boat on the waterway. Following the discovery, Police visited the location and removed…
Read MoreEconomist warns of danger of inflation from oil and gas
– notes exchange rate fluctuation can damage economic sectors While Guyana is in the midst of a currency crisis before first oil has even arrived, Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) Director of Economics, Dr Justin Ram has urged Guyana to guard against the impact that inflation driven by oil can have on the overall economy and exchange rate. Dr Ram was at the time speaking at a public policy talk facilitated by the Guyana Budget Policy Institute last Saturday night at the Regency Suites hotel. The very theme of the…
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