Once again we have organised (and pre-recorded) a recital for World Poetry Day.
This year we had an excellent response to our call for submissions.
It is our privilege to host poets and readers from Barbados, Belize, Jamaica, St. Lucia and Trinidad & Tobago as well as Guyana.
In 2021, the Guyana parliament approved an amendment to the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Control) Bill, resulting in the removal of custodial sentences for persons in possession of 30 grammes or less of cannabis. While this was a good first step, it falls woefully short of the legislative changes that are needed to correct the social harm that criminalization has wreaked on communities for decades.
Attorney General, Anil Nandlall in speaking on the bill stated that decriminalisation was never the aim, and to that, I ask, why not? If it is one thing Guyanese politicians love it’s extensive consultations. This is not to say that consultations are not necessary, they are an incredibly important part of democratic processes. However, there has been the tendency to utilise this as a way of not making firm decisions on divisive legislation such as marijuana decriminalisation, removal of the buggery laws etc. Continue reading →
There is no dispute that much poverty still exists in Guyana. Its existence and alleged absence of solutions to relieve it were among the highlights of the Budget Debate last week, uninspiring as many of the speeches were.
The United Nations has more experience than any other international agency in the study, measurement and eradication of poverty. It has embarked on the Third United Nations Decade for the Eradication of Poverty (2018-2027), having completed a first and a second decade. In its recent reports tracking poverty rates, the UN has used earnings of below US$1.90 per day as the basis of measuring poverty. Those living on less than US$1.90 per day are considered as living below the poverty line. Numerous measures have been discussed and debated over decades to lift people above the poverty line, and prior to the covid-19 pandemic, great successes have been achieved in reducing poverty. Continue reading →
Kaieteur News – The PPP Government and leadership can either be congratulated or condemned for its relentless commitment, its premediated visions, to target African Guyanese communities, interests, ways of life, and then systemically erode all three. The latest involves cooperatives and idle lands (Demerara Waves, January 23), as presented by the Hon. Minister of Labour. On the one hand, I go out of my way to congratulate the PPP brain trust for coming up with yet another perverse scheme that indicates the energies that are devoted to delivering the vindictive, vengeful, and vicious thrusted again at the breast of African Guyanese. Continue reading →
Of note, is the roughly US$1b in oil revenue which has been allocated to the 2023 budget.
There is no doubt that the 2023 budget which has been pegged at $781.9b, a hefty 44.1% above the 2022 figure, holds out the prospects of expansive development in the country. Just for comparison purposes the 2010 budget was pegged at $143b.
This is the fourth budget produced by this PPP/C government and the 2021 and 2022 editions also contained substantial outlays for infrastructure and improvements in key sectors. The upshot of all of this is that major development work is in the pipeline and how it turns out will provide valuable insight into whether the country is on the right trajectory. Continue reading →
Jan 20, 2023 – Kaieteur News – Around five percent of Guyana’s population is undernourished and a further 43% cannot afford a healthy diet, the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has concluded in a new report released this week.
With Guyana’s population averaging around 800,000 the five percent of undernourished people works out to about 40,000. Titled “REGIONAL OVERVIEW OF 2022: TOWARDS IMPROVING AFFORDABILITY OF HEALTHY DIETS,” the report also concluded that in 2020, 42 percent of the population in the world could not afford a healthy diet, almost 3.1 billion people. Due to the higher cost of a healthy diet, this percentage in Latin America and the Caribbean was 22.5 percent, or 131 million people, an increase of 8 million from 2019. According to the report South America accounts for 57 percent of people unable to afford a healthy diet in Latin America and the Caribbean (74.2 million), followed by Mesoamerica (43.1 million) and the Caribbean (13.9 million). More than half of the Caribbean population (52 percent) cannot afford a healthy diet, followed by Mesoamerica (27.8 percent) and South America (18.4 percent). Continue reading →
In this country commonplace problems in need of practical solutions are frequently prone to metamorphose into political controversies. Never mind that they are in essence not political issues; the leaden hand of politics leaves its imprint on everything here. And so it is in the case of the situation in Mocha: on the one hand the allegations of discrimination reverberate around, and on the other the response echoes across the airways that progress is being stymied. And all this because a group of squatters refuses to remove from land earmarked for a new road between Eccles and New Diamond.
It would seem that they are not actually in the path of the road itself, but on land adjacent to it, and that the proposed highway will pass behind their structures. It may be that the position of the Ministry of Housing has shifted over the months, since in September of the year before last, according to residents of the area appropriately named Pepper Field, they had been told to reposition their houses so they would face the new road. While this would have recommended itself as an offer to be accepted, especially if some kind of compensation were to be paid, the residents did not take the Ministry up on this. As one resident explained, if people didn’t get permission to build there, then no one was going to do it. Continue reading →
On September 27, 1965, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) delivered a 1965-page report into Rac ial Problems in the Public Service of British Guiana. By letter dated April 6, 1965, Prime Minister Burnham, in his invitation, said to the ICJ that his Government had been “deeply concerned with the need to remove from our society sources of racial disharmony and to promote the right of each individual, whatever his ethnic origin, to have an equal opportunity to play a meaningful part in the community.”
He said that his Government’s concern had been to “determine whether such [racial] imbalance as may exist in any particular field can be corrected and, if so, what is the shortest practicable period for such correction.” Burnham may well have been pressured by the UK to invite the ICJ having regard to searing ethnic strife of the early 1960s and the perceived undermining of Indian political representation by the imposition of proportional representation to defeat the PPP. Continue reading →
In 2021, the Guyana parliament approved an amendment to the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (Control) Bill, resulting in the removal of custodial sentences for persons in possession of 30 grammes or less of cannabis. While this was a good first step, it falls woefully short of the legislative changes that are needed to correct the social harm that criminalization has wreaked on communities for decades.
GUYANA: World Poetry Day – 21st March 2023 – Moray House Trust
This year we had an excellent response to our call for submissions.
It is our privilege to host poets and readers from Barbados, Belize, Jamaica, St. Lucia and Trinidad & Tobago as well as Guyana.
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