Kaieteur News

Online readership yesterday 113,895

February 05, 2013 - Vol. 6 No. 06 - Price $80

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Guyana’s largest selling daily & New York’s most popular weekly

Jagdeo’s empty job promise ...

No Guyanese workers as Marriott hotel goes up …Chinese company barred from speaking A view from the seawall of the Marriott Hotel under construction.

MPs order Mon Repos smash-up … Burglars police probe Tundra driver steal security into fuel theft charged with firm's $12M at Region Four drunk driving money safe

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Kaieteur News

Jagdeo’s empty job promise ...

Tuesday February 05, 2013

No Guyanese workers as Marriott hotel goes up …Chinese company barred from speaking

A view from the seawall of the Marriott Hotel under construction.

The construction of the Marriott-branded hotel, which is so far being funded

by Guyanese taxpayers, does not involve any local construction workers. Neither the company, Shanghai Construction Group, nor the government is saying why.

The government had

boasted that the project, which is costing some US$60 million, would create hundreds of jobs; but months into construction, Kaieteur News saw no Guyanese workers at the site after repeated visits.

The first visit was made two weeks ago; and then

another visit was made a week ago. The only construction workers seen were of Chinese origin. The Chinese workers eat, work, and sleep on the site.

The only Guyanese at the site was a man who identified himself as a consultant.

Representatives of the

Chinese company at the Kingston, Georgetown site are not being allowed to speak to Kaieteur News. When Kaieteur News visited and asked to talk with those in charge of the project, they said that they first had to get the permission of Atlantic Hotels Incorporated (AHI).

AHI is the company set up by the Guyana government through which taxpayers’ dollars are being funneled to finance the facility in the absence of any named investor to date.

After making a call to AHI, which is run by Winston Brassington, who also heads

Government’s investment arm NICIL, the Chinese said they could not talk to Kaieteur News. The hotel is being built

by Shanghai Construction Group (SCG), whose Caribbean office is based in Trinidad and Tobago.

When Kaieteur News (continued on page 8)

DO YOU KNOW THAT JAGDEO’S BEST FRIEND IS THE ONLY PERSON IN GUYANA TO OWN THREE MEDIA HOUSES ...

Radio, Television and Newspaper?

Dr. Bobby Ramroop

1) Channel 28 now TVG 28 2) A radio station - 89.5FM 3) Guyana Times newspaper

Former President Bharrat Jagdeo

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Kaieteur News

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MPs order police probe into fuel theft at Region Four - vehicle collecting linked to senior official

By Leonard Gildarie A Parliamentary committee with sweeping powers to examine how public monies are spent, has ordered officials of Region Four (Demerara/ Mahaica) to initiate a fullblown investigation into how over $700,000 in fuel was illegally uplifted from Guyana Oil Company (GuyOil) in December 2011. The probe, to involve the police, will stretch to GuyOil also.

Not only was the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) alarmed yesterday over the seeming reluctance by the regional administration to carry out an internal investigation, but revelations that it failed to follow up with the police almost eight months after writing them for assistance to analyse handwriting samples, drew severe criticisms from both the government and the opposition sides of PAC. In December 2011, in less than a week, three different vehicles pulled up at the GuyOil gas station in Kitty, and used drums to take away a total of $733,076 in fuel, lubricants and other related items. From GuyOil records available, it was determined

that two of the vehicles’ number plates were not registered at the Guyana Revenue Authority, while the third was linked to a former senior official in the Region, Deputy Regional Executive Officer, Ashford Ambedkar.

It was not clear whether GuyOil asked for identification at the time.

After being grilled by the PAC’s members, current Regional Executive Officer, Deolall Rooplall, admitted that the Region had made out a cheque for fuel and lubricants to GuyOil for a period and there was a balance that the perpetrators may have had inside knowledge of. It was this amount that was targeted.

How GuyOil went ahead and authorized the release of fuel and lubricants was all part of the many burning questions being asked by PAC. SIGNATURES According to documents, the signatures of two officers at the Region, Deoram Ramdass, and Ambedkar, were on the documents authorizing the release of the fuel from GuyOil. Both denied the signatures.

Under Fire: Region Four REO, Deolall Rooplall (left) and former Deputy REO, Ashford Ambedkar during yesterday’s session with the Public Accounts Committee.

Rooplall testified that the police were written last June to compare the handwriting of both officers but now eight months later, neither he nor the region has followed up on the findings. During an initial probe at the Region’s office at Triumph, East Coast Demerara, some pertinent documents disappeared. Yet nothing was done.

Although not saying how, the REO said that they managed to track down one of the vehicle owners and he too denied ever doing business with the Region Four administration.

Ramdass is now reportedly on administrative leave for another matter.

Trevor Williams, an MP for the Alliance For Change

(AFC) on Public Accounts Committee, found it “interesting” that such a large amount of fuel could have been delivered by GuyOil without raising eyebrows.

MP for the government side, Gail Teixeira, was even more blunt. Clearly, she said, fraud was involved and tampering with documents, false number plates and, it makes it crystal there was a conspiracy to steal the fuel. She also said it was significant that it was in December, when someone may have wanted to utilize the remaining monies before the end of the year. There were also questions of how GuyOil released the fuel without the vehicles being authorized.

The REO, who is the accounting officer for the region, was also blasted for not following up with the police even though he knew he was appearing before the committee to answer questions.

BREACH Chairman of PAC, former Finance Minister, Carl Greenidge, was convinced that the incident was a breach at the Region. According to the REO, the region has now

implemented measures that will not allow for the upliftment of more than 60 litres of fuel at any one time. GuyOil is also now delivering fuel directly and there is a bowser (tanker) available too.

Greenidge pointed out that as REO, Rooplall had the obligation at the time of discovery to carry out an investigation and that the Ministry of Local Government should also get involved too.

He said that the incident is a major embarrassment for the region.

The REO and the Region Four administration have two weeks to update the PAC on measures taken for the internal investigations; for the police’s involvement, and the extent of the Ministry of Local Government’s involvement.

Yesterday, there were numerous other incidents of breaches and possible wrongdoings.

The PAC signaled its intentions to recommend several critical changes to improve the checks and balances at Region Four.

The PAC yesterday also examined several instances of overpayments and indications of poor checks and balances at Region Four.

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Kaieteur News

Kaieteur News Printed and Published by National Media & Publishing Company Ltd. 24 Saffon Street, Charlestown, Georgetown, Guyana.

Publisher: GLENN LALL Editor: Adam Harris Tel: 225-8465, 225-8491. Fax: 225-8473, 226-8210

EDITORIAL

The major threats to life in Guyana People in Guyana are finding out that their lives are more likely to be snuffed out on the roads or by an armed bandit.

Scarcely a day goes by without the media reporting that someone was involved in a car crash, or some pedestrian who happened to be standing at the side of the road when he or she was hit by a vehicle that lost control while trying to overtake another.

That was the case of a contractor who had dared to step out of his house in bright daylight to attend to an errand.

Since then there have been others.

One recently claimed the lives of two people and we now learn that the driver, a 17-year-old failed the sobriety test.

Obviously the parents of this child lacked supervisory capability.

This child could not have started drinking alcohol overnight so to do so at seventeen would mean that his parents ignored this foible. He has killed two people and injured so many others. His penalty would be lenient because the courts are not rigid when it comes to vehicle homicide.

In the United States an individual could be charged for murder if he drives recklessly and kills someone. In some states murder attracts the death penalty.

Suffice it to say that the first person to be prosecuted under this new law is serving a prison sentence that could see him remain behind bars for the rest of his natural life.

But the penalty does not end there; relatives of the victims are now filing their civil action. In Guyana accident victims rarely go to the courts in pursuit of civil claims despite the criminal proceedings. And this may be the cause that people take driving on the streets for granted. In any case, the courts are not known to hand down rigid penalties. The result is that drunk drivers get away with little more than a slap on their wrists, regardless of how much pain they leave in their wake.

It has not escaped notice that many of these motorists, in the wake of an accident some drivers would either abandon their vehicles or would simply flee the scene of an accident.

While the roads are dangerous there is another threat, this time from fires. Most of the houses in the country are made of wood, but so too are many houses in other countries. The difference is that in Guyana these houses are being destroyed by fire at an alarming rate. These days it seems that hardly a week goes by without some building being destroyed by fire.

We can understand the odd case of a spark from an electric wire starting a fire if the wire is frayed or the insulation is of use no longer. But there have been fires caused by avoidable circumstances, the most common being arson.

However, many are caused by careless use of naked flames—the child who set a mattress ablaze at West Demerara, the house that went up in flames because a lighted stove fell on the floor, the case of a rubbish fire getting out of hand and of course, the overloading of electrical points.

The Guyana Fire Service says that it educates people by placing articles in the print media. However, one needs to realize that the focus may be on the wrong people. There should be sessions in schools because children are perhaps the greatest change agents in the home.

The year is barely a month old and already there have been almost a dozen fires, two of them on Sunday alone.

What makes the situation so bad is that Guyanese are not known to be insurers of property. Their vehicles are insured by compulsion and this is to compensate the victims where necessary. But many homes are not insured because the homeowners are convinced that fires will not attack them.

So we are left to ask ourselves, “What costs the nation more? Vehicle accidents which affect the human resource or the fires that destroy material, almost all of which have to be imported?” And cars are all imported.

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Letters... Where your views make the news Letters...

The struggle for dominance will destroy this nation DEAR EDITOR, “There are many questions pertaining to M r. K i s s o o n ’s r e s e a r c h material” (KN, January 31, 2013) and “Anti-racism crusaders should think about all other ethnic groups” (KN, Feb 4, 2013), and Roger Williams’ “Kissoon is highlighting the fact of racism” (KN, February 1, 2013) and then reading of some of Kissoon’s statistics on his theory of Indianization of the public sector under the PPP, we get a very clear picture of what is wrong with Guyana.

The problem is childish, biased and suspect analysis and brazenly illogical and preposterous statements coupled with the spraying around of statistics and numbers without context and full-fledged analysis and explanation for the largely erroneous and incomplete conclusions.

Bhagwan finds faults with Freddie, and rightly so in some cases, but does not venture beyond the effects to look at the causes. I think a proper analysis of Kissoon’s research can only occur if the entire research is examined and to this end, I call upon Kaieteur News to put the research on its website in an accessible format such as a pdf file.

Beyond the ethnic composition of the public sector, the bottomline is that Guyana actually needs a smaller public sector. The public sector is highly

inefficient and must be made efficient, which will naturally shrink it by about a third to a half of its current size. That shrinkage would reduce ethnic imbalance. Then you could go about balancing it when hiring new workers.

Bhagwan and others love to point out the fact that the traditional public sector remains African dominated.

Indeed it is. However, there is no mention from this group of a historical and endemic refusal of Indians to join the traditional public sector. The PPP has been in power for 20 years and Indians refuse to join the police and army. This Indian scorn of the public sector is never referenced by these commentators. If the police force is declining and needs to recruit and only one ethnic group is willing to put up with the low pay, unsafe working conditions and negative societal stigmatization, why stand on a soapbox and behave as if the imbalance in the public sector is due to some African conspiracy to deny Indians from the public sector?

The incontrovertible fact is that Indians, who are 40% of the population, have always demonstrated a potent disinclination to joining the public service, and that undisputable fact explains in large part why there continues to remain a serious ethnic imbalance in the public sector.

The biggest reason for Indians refusing to join the

public service has been economic. Indeed, some Indians were forced out of the public sector under the PNC, but the primary reason for the poor Indian participation in the public sector has been low pay followed by migration.

But the PPP has changed all of this. It has created a parallel public service comprised of primarily Indian and PPP contract workers who are better paid than the traditional African-dominated public sector. This has been the gravy train the PPP created.

We saw some of the outrageous salaries some of these individuals are collecting for doing nothing more than the little the traditional public sector worker does. This fat cat parallel public service has magnified the inefficiencies.

Because they are paid more, this parallel public service takes more from the taxes of the poor and working class who hand over hefty taxes and VAT from small salaries to the PPP. I am not opposed to ethnic balance in the public service if it occurs throughout the entire public service from the lowest level jobs to the highest positions. However, that is not what is happening under the PPP. At the top of the traditional public sector, more and more Indians are being moved into supervisory and management positions. Indians’ increased presence in the non-contract public sector in the 20 years

of PPP rule has come predominantly at the higher levels of public service management.

It is not only wildly inefficient and economically disastrous for the PPP to expand the public service by creating a parallel contract worker public service (as this expands inefficiency and practices duplication and burdens taxpayers more to pay these fat cat contract workers) it is also very discriminatory.

It is discriminatory because the African-dominated traditional public service is not being compensated anywhere near the pay offered to the Indiandominated parallel contract worker public service created by the PPP, even when they do the same job. This is a discriminatory practice.

P e o p l e like Devanand Bhagwan do not understand the tragedy that is unfolding in this country. We would not have this glaring concern if the PPP did not in the past 20 years create this contract parallel public service that is paying Sultan’s salaries to people who are doing redundant work already being done in the traditional public sector.

The issue is not just the traditional public sector. It is intellectually dishonest to focus on that sector alone.

Ethnic balancing of the public service is occurring under the PPP, but in a discriminatory fashion. Maybe Kissoon’s (Continued on page 7)

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Kaieteur News

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Letters... Where your views make the news Letters... Where your views make the news

Is the GFC promoting timber processing in Asia or in Guyana?

DEAR EDITOR, Kaieteur News reports Commissioner James Singh of the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC) as saying that ‘there was much more scope for increased production and productivity’ (KN, ‘Harvest more logs – Commissioner Singh’, 03 February 2013). On his reckoning, Guyana could be producing 1.2 million m3 of logs each year.

The Edinburgh Centre for Tropical Forestry established long-term yield plots for Barama in the 1990s (now sadly abandoned, lost or relogged) from which an average sustainable output of 20 m3/ha every 60 years was estimated, although Barama itself was taking only 8 m3/ha in that period.

In practice, because of the highly selective logging which the GFC allows, much more than 60,000 ha of forest (1.2 million/20 = 60,000) are harvested each year across Guyana, with all the related damage and lost carbon production caused by failure

to make mandatory reducedimpact logging and obligatory harvesting of technically proven species.

Concern about this waste caused Norway to include a penalty limit in its Joint Concept Note with Guyana in 2009. If in any one year the total log production (including posts, poles and chainsawn lumber) exceeds the average from the years 2003-2008, the excess ‘will be counted as increased forest carbon emissions’ and Guyana will be penalized financially.

During the five years 2003-2008, that average production was 481,000 m3/ year. During the subsequent three years, the annual production was 468,000, 532,000 and 500,000 m3. An increase to 1.2 million m3, that is, an excess of 720,000 m3 would incur a penalty of US$ 6.6 million at Norway’s rate of US$ 5 per tonne of forest carbon. Is this amount likely to change behaviour?

Increased production per hectare will involve

harvesting a wider range of species, less desirable commercially although still technically adequate for most purposes if marketed professionally.

Even at a modest export price of US$100/m3 for less desirable timbers, that production would raise US$72 million, against which the Norwegian penalty is derisory.

What about the GFC claim that ‘We have had many international audits done here and the auditors have verified that we have the mechanisms and that these mechanisms are working’.

That is not an accurate statement.

Barama lost its FSC certificate in less than a year (in early 2007) for failing on a range of simple tests, including not having a management plan for its whole area.

Barama and Variety Woods now hold Certificates of Legal Origin, but that says nothing about the quality of the forest management, or

Inaccurate utterances and a superficial acquaintance with the law DEAR EDITOR, I read with some amusement, a letter published in Kaieteur News of 4th February 2013, captioned “It is frightening how little the learned Attorney-General seems to know of the Constitution” written by Christopher Ram. At first glance, my instinctive reaction was to ignore the letter and allow its author to revel in his own bewilderment. But then again, I revere my duty to the public, to ensure that information which is disseminated through public media remain unpolluted and factual. It is purely this sentiment which has inspired a reply.

The author contends that it is “ludicrous” to label a Bill which has emanated from the opposition an “Opposition Bill” simply because it is passed by the National Assembly. Anyone who has but a mere fleeting acquaintance with parliamentary practice and procedure would know that Bills carry certain descriptive labels if merely to explain their origin. For example, Bills emanating from the Government dealing with public business enjoy the label “Government Bills”; other Bills, similarly, carry the nomenclature of either “Opposition Bills” or “Private Bills”, depending upon their nature and content. These descriptive labels are widely used in Parliamentary Standing Orders the world over, and by most major texts

dealing with parliamentary practice and procedure. That Mr. Ram is unaware of such excruciatingly trite matters cannot be a fault attributable to the Attorney General.

The letter next contends that the Office of theAttorney General has no input whatsoever in that interregnum between when a Bill is passed by the National Assembly and its assent by the President. It seems to have escaped the author that the Attorney General’s Chambers houses the Office of the Chief Parliamentary Counsel.

Additionally, the Attorney General remains, constitutionally, the Principal Legal Adviser of the State apparatus.

A concatenation of these functional responsibilities has crystallized into a practice of great utility dating back to the days of the Colonial Assembly which requires all Bills passed by the House to be sent to the Chambers of the Attorney General by the Clerk of the National Assembly, firstly to be examined by the Chief Parliamentary Counsel and then by the Attorney General, who issues an Assent Certificate advising His Excellency, the President, that he may properly assent to the Bill, provided, of course, that in the opinion of the Attorney General, the Bill is in order.

This document, together with the Bill, is returned to the Clerk of the National Assembly for transmission to

His Excellency. The efficacy of this salutary practice is patently underscored by the fact that the Clerk of the National Assembly, since colonial times, has never been a person formally trained in law and there has never been a legal officer intrinsically attached to the Parliament.

The letter refers to certain Standing Orders and Constitutional provisions in support of the contentions advanced. The fact that an extant practice or procedure is not expressly captured by a statute, the Constitution, or, the Standing Orders, does not, ipso facto, render the same either wrong or unconstitutional, is a concept with which the author is, not surprisingly, unfamiliar.

Regnant and conventional prudence have long dictated both in law and in parliamentary procedure that ancient usage, customs and practice will and indeed have been employed for centuries to supplement legal vacuums wherever they manifest themselves.

But alas, familiarity with these concepts demands a little more than a superficial acquaintance with the law.

The expressed and implied ad hominem assault, which has now assumed a permanent feature in this author’s public utterances about me, though recognised, is simply unworthy of my response.

Mohabir Anil Nandlall, MP Attorney-General and Minister of Legal Affairs

about the legality of production of purchased logs. The Efeca report of May 2011 showed that the legality verification scheme for Guyana was so inadequate that a complete alternative was proposed.

The GFA Consulting scoping study on independent forest monitoring, published in December 2011, showed that the GFC scheme would not meet the expectations of the European Union for a Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA). The December 2012 report from Rainforest Alliance was notably critical about forest governance.

So who would benefit most from increased log production? It is no surprise that the India-based Café Coffee Day (VHPI) and the China-based Bai Shan Lin would be major beneficiaries.

Both these companies have promised major investments; which have not (yet) materialized; see for example ‘Two years on…Indian logging firm still to build processing plant’, Stabroek News, 03 January 2013; ‘Chinese firm plans US$100M investment here’, Guyana

Chronicle, 9 February 2007. Yet these two companies have received substantial logging concessions. The GFC should not focus on more logging, but on helping to secure greater in-Guyana benefits from what is logged now. That would include more real support for inGuyana value-added processing, which has been national policy since at least 1997 and means more jobs, more skills, more tax paid, and more income for Guyanese.

While the GFC has

informed the International Tropical Timber Organization (ITTO) that it has slightly increased the log export commission rates in Guyana, the GFC has not bothered to inform Guyanese by updating its own website (as at 03 February). So could the Commissioner of the GFC and the Minister for Natural Resources and Environment focus on sustainable management in and improving benefits for Guyana and less on benefits for China and India?

Janette Bulkan

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Kaieteur News

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Letters... Where your views make the news Letters... Where your views make the news

Compliments of an imperial administration, we have a city that is congested and ugly DEAR EDITOR, The citizens of Georgetown and Guyana must feel pained and a sense of sadness when they look at the state of the Capital, and the many things that are ugly – a situation that need not have been.

At the risk of sounding narcissistic, all of these could have been avoided if the Government had only allowed the elected Mayor and

Councillors, a chance to really m a n a g e t h e c i t y, s i n c e 1994.

For now I refer to only one aspect of our woes. Look at the Stabroek News Editorial (of Monday, February 4, 2013) titled ”Big buildings but no parking” There must be some diabolical plan by the PPP/C administration to destroy the city.

Whatever the reasons,

these are short sighted and a demonstration of political immaturity - these suggest an inglorious march of folly.

The Editorial begins “In a letter in the February 2nd edition of Stabroek News entitled ‘No Parking for taxpayers at new GRA location’, Ms. Nadia Burke related the tribulations she endured while trying to find parking close to the new

Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) Headquarters on Camp Street.

Citizens must know that in 2000 after wide-ranging discussions and consultations with citizens, the security forces and most importantly the business community, a plan for the enhancement and development of the City was approved by the Council, same was submitted to

cabinet to be given the ‘Green Light’ so to speak, for its implementation.

A significant recommendation was that every new development in the business district of Georgetown should provide adequate parking on the ground floor or elsewhere to facilitate staff and customers.

At the cabinet meeting t h e acceptance of this proposal was advanced by me, in addition we asked for the use of unused lands in the City for parking.

President Jagdeo led the assault on these proposals saying these will be a disincentive to the business

community.

To put a nail in the coffin, the Government also refused a recommendation for land, for parking for commuters who travelled to the East Coast and Berbice; an empty plot of land north of the City was identified, that too was ignored.

Since then the administration has sold, or rather handed over these properties to friends.

So compliments of an imperial administration, we have a city that is congested and ugly.

I call upon all patriots to speak up and to the heavens to help us.

Hamilton Green, J.P.,

Let us set aside our differences and put Guyana first DEAR EDITOR, My contribution is a letter of commendation to Mr. Joseph G. Singh, Major General (rtd).

I refer to a letter carried in Saturday Stabroek News, dated February 2, 2013, under the caption, “We Should Rededicate Ourselves to Building a Nation and Society of Which We Can All Be Proud”.

Personally, I found the contents of that letter intriguing and it further reminds me of what APNU and its leadership and civil society have been calling for in this nation.

History, would have recorded that during the British Colonial rule, then British Guiana, this nation was once referred to both domestically and internationally as “the garden society” and the “bread basket of the Caribbean”. In those days, citizens had to comply with laws.

Today, our nation, which had high merit on the world map, has become a nation where its citizens have no respect or regard for each other.

Our former leaders and

Executive Presidents, the late LFS Burnham, Cheddi Jagan and Hugh Desmond Hoyte, inherited a healthy and prosperous nation after gaining Independence from the British.

However, the current state of our country and citizens speaks for itself.

In addition to Mr. Joseph G. Singh’s comment, my opinion is that Guyanese should rededicate themselves to nation building…, and my firm conviction is that the mindset of our political leaders should change.

By virtue of this, Guyanese will become involved in moving this country forward in a positive direction, exhibiting the country’s motto “one people, one nation, one destiny”, an identity we all would be proud of.

Therefore, as a proud Guyanese of this Godblessed nation, I would like to pronounce and make a public appeal by encouraging my fellow Guyanese, including all Political Leaders, let us set aside our differences and put Guyana first.

Annette Ferguson

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Kaieteur News

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Letters... Where your views make the news Letters... Where your views make the news

What solution best resolves charges of ideological racism?

DEAR EDITOR, Mr. Roger Williams must be commended when he wrote that, “racism in every form must be condemned … or else we are all living a lie! We are all safe in a social-policy space delineated by a respect for fact, truth, detail and evidence!” in referring to “Kissoon cites stats to support position on Jagdeo Presidency” (SN 1-29-13).

So let’s await the same forthcoming response which explains what he means when he suggests that “in that nottoo-distant and cataclysmic event-paradox, Bharat Jagdeo’s efforts to ruin Frederick Kissoon (may) become the instrument of his own exposure!” as he wrote in the KN of 2-1-13 titled ”Kissoon is highlighting the fact of racism”.

Whether or not Mr. Williams responds to Mr. Devanand Bhagwan’s letter in the KN of 1-31-13 titled “there are many questions pertaining to Mr Kissoon’s research material” he will find it very difficult to explain whether living legend President Nelson Mandela, was not exactly a copycat “ideological racist” by Mr

Kissoon’s analysis.

President Mandela cannot be right in seeking to correctly reflect his country’s ethnic makeup in South Africa’s public and armed forces (whilst President Jagdeo is conversely wrong) and so pander to anyone’s prejudices or hate, thereby invalidating pursuance of such justifiable fairness.

Few can ignore the irony where the ethnic stocking of Guyana’s public service and armed forces by the PNC (1964-1992) is most justified, but that done by South Africa’s white apartheid era rulers is condemned, even by the PNC, as blatantly “unsustainable and wrong”.

In yet evidencing celebratory glee, Mr. Williams is most proud to harp on how “former President Bharat Jagdeo may well rue the day that he forgot that Satya Meva Jayate (“Truth Alone Triumphs”) and that even the most hardcore of the “jati” in Guyana would one day come to the inescapable position that the level of overt and covert racism heaped upon Afro-Guyanese post-1992 was unsustainable and wrong!”

Isn’t there something ominous which gives credence to Mr. Williams’s talking drum echoes of Dr Kean Gibson’s attack on Hindus targeting their en masse creolised transformation even as there is a conjoined retributive dangling danger over them like the sword of Damocles?

Additionally, how can identifying Dr Gibson’s attack on Hinduism be seen as just initiating “honest debate”?

What underlies Mr. Williams’ satisfactory relief that “one of the most hardcore of the ‘jati’” i.e. “Frederick Kissoon, has obviously (and to his credit) been ‘transformed’ since”, to be finally aligned with those who feel they own Guyana, can only be obvious. If so, all well and good for him. Then Mr. Williams should have no difficulty in accepting that the same self admitted Africanised approved “hardcore jati’s transformation’ only gives much more profound elevation to significantly embellish his previous public condemnation of Dr Gibson’s attacks on Indians and their religion.

What juicy morsel will now be served when Mr. Williams

(or either Mr. Kissoon himself) attempts to explain what Mr. Kissoon actually was, prior, to him being enabled to see the blinding light. Both men cannot be both diametrically right and wrong at the same time on the same issue. Neither are Mr. Williams’s protestations any more credible after allegedly misrepresenting distinguished Professor Ali Mazrui as alleged by KN’s Peeping Tom in his 2-2-13 column titled “What is the source of our fears”.

In fact, none can fail to detect Mr. Williams’s uncertainty after his failure to convert water into wine. An unsure Mr. Williams points out how the “Africanised hardcore jati”, i.e. Mr. Kissoon “is delicately trying to sidestep the core sociological/ cultural premises of the racism Gibson outlines (supposedly in Hinduism) by characterizing such racism as “ideological”… (and ironically here is where Mr. Williams created a vortex which can only drown him when he equivocates that)… “one senses that there is no significant distance between their analyses and conclusions”.

If Mr. Williams’s fanciful hocus pocus can equate and convert Dr Gibson’s venomous attacks on Hindus and their religion with Mr. Kissoon’s uncertain charges of “ideological racism” such that “there is no significant distance between their analyses and conclusions” wouldn’t it again sentence President Nelson Mandela, the South African-led ANC government

and all its black citizens to a new improved apartheid hell, all over again, because they are all likewise “ideological racists”?

There has to be better hope in Federalism if we are to survive and grow. What better alternatives can Mr. Williams suggest which does not condemn all his countrymen to permanent acrimony?

Sultan Mohamed

The struggle for dominance will...

From page 4 numbers showing Indianization atop the ministries and departments he mentioned, do not represent the entire traditional public sector, but in this sector where Indians have chosen and opted to not join, for Indians to assume the majority or a significant proportion of management and supervisory positions when Indians represent just a small minority is evidence of ethnic discrimination practised by the PPP in those ministries

and departments.

This struggle by Indians and Africans for dominance in this country will destroy this nation for all its races.

Their push to fatten their own and to deny the other group creates inefficiencies and losses and promotes discrimination. Finally, many of the contracts which are being handed out by the PPP to their failed contractor cronies and friends were contracts that were done by the public sector in the past.

M. Maxwell

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Kaieteur News

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Burglars steal security firm's $12M money safe An electronics firm that sells tracking and other security devices is now seeking police help to track a gang of burglars who stole their money-safe.

Police said that the owners of El Dorado Communications (ECI) discovered yesterday that thieves had broken into their Mandela Avenue premises and made off with a safe containing

some $12M in local and foreign currency.

The office was reportedly closed over the weekend.

Kaieteur News understands that security cameras installed by the company picked up the images of about three individuals entering and leaving the building. A source said that the firm had no security guards.

El Dorado Communica-

tions is owned and operated

by Tyrone Williams. The firm has been attempting to popularize the application of a range of alarm and tracking devices to help protect companies from theft, vandalism and break-ins.

The firm also employs technicians to install the equipment. ECI also offers GPS devices to aid in tracking of stolen vehicles.

US announces US$165 Immigrant Fee Guyanese immigrants to the US will now have to pay a US$165 Immigrant Free and it comes into effect immediately.

The new fee is part of the measures of the US Citizenship and Immigrations Services (USCIS) to recoup costs to handle, file and maintain the immigrant visa package, and the costs of producing and delivering the permanent resident card.

According to the USCIS, any individual who on or after February 1, 2013 receives an immigrant visa package from a United States consulate or embassy abroad (including Canada and Mexico) must pay the Immigrant Fee. Children who enter the United States under either the Orphan or Hague adoption programmes, Iraqi and Af-

ghan special immigrants, returning residents (SB-1s), and those issued K visas are the only immigrant visa cases exempt from paying the new fee.

“Submit your payment after receiving your visa package from DOS and before you depart for the United States.

Pay your USCIS Immigrant Fee online. You will need to complete the electronic form and provide your checking account information, or debit or credit card information. All cheque payments must be drawn on a U.S. bank.”

The USCIS said that it will not issue the green card until the required USCIS Immigrant fee is paid.

“Failure to pay does not affect your lawful status. You will have your passport stamped showing your lawful admission and permanent

resident status. This stamp is valid for one year but it is strongly advised that you pay the immigrant fee as soon as possible to avoid delays in receiving your Permanent Resident Card.”

The new fee of $165 was established in USCIS's final rule adjusting fees for immigration applications and petitions announced on Sept. 24, 2010. USCIS has worked closely with the Department of State (DOS) to implement the new fee which allows USCIS to recover the cost of processing that is performed in the United States after immigrant visa holders receive their visa packages from DOS and are admitted to the United States.

Applicants will now have to pay both the DOS visa application processing fee and the USCIS Immigrant Fee.

No Guyanese workers ...

From page 2 contacted Michael Ziang, SCG’s Managing Director in Trinidad, he said that he could not answer any questions and directed this newspaper to AHI. Ziang said he would offer an interview to Kaieteur News if the reporter flies to Trinidad; but even so, he would need the permission of AHI. Kaieteur News contacted Brassington and Dr Ashni Singh, the Finance Minister, for comments on the issue, but more than two weeks later, there has been no response.

In late 2011, former President Bharrat Jagdeo officially turned the sod for the construction of the hotel with the promise, that the project will create hundreds of jobs in the construction phase, and beyond when it becomes operational.

The 160-room hotel and entertainment complex is expected by February 2014.

D e s p i t e pressure by opposition parliamentary parties and a Parliamentary

motion to halt Government funding for the project, the government is stubbornly pushing ahead with the project.

The government is so far using tax dollars to fund the project. It has already handed over US$10million (G$2 billion) to SCG. Private investors are expected to contribute US$27 million.

The government has some special arrangement that guarantees the private investors that they would get their money if the project folds.

So, if in a scenario where the project fails and the value of the property depreciates to a value below what the investors have plugged, then the investors will get back their money, and there would be nothing to return to NICIL. Taxpayers’ dollars would go down the drain.

The government will participate in the project by way of equity, in the sum of US$4 million. This will be committed through NICIL, one of the investment arms of

the government which holds its assets.

The equity contribution determines the government’s strength in Atlantic Hotels Incorporated – the company created to see the project through. As it stands, the government is currently the sole shareholder in the company.

However, apart from the equity contribution, financing for the project would also come from “subordinate loan stocks” of US$15 million invested by NICIL. Addi n g t h e U S $ 2 million, NICIL will end up spending in development costs for the project, including design and other preliminary studies altogether, US$21 million.

So, in total, the amount of money the government is pushing into the project is just about what it should cost in Guyana to complete the project, industry experts say.

The additional US$40 million remains a mystery to industry experts.

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Kaieteur News

Page 9

THE DISCREDITING OF A MINORITY GOVT. All executive authority is vested in the President of Guyana. His Ministers are merely his assistants and his advisers.

Some of these Ministers may feel otherwise; some of them may even feel that they can act independent of the President but they do at their own peril because constitutionally Ministers derive whatever authority they have by virtue of the executive authority which is vested in the President.

Apart from the quota of technocratic Ministers that the President is allowed to appoint, he is required to appoint Ministers from amongst persons who are elected members of the National Assembly or from persons who are qualified to be elected as such members.

It is therefore possible for the President to include in his Cabinet persons drawn from the opposition political parties. The Constitution does not forbid this; but neither does it demand it.

As such there is no moral or constitutional compulsion

for the President to include opposition parliamentarians or persons so eligible to be opposition parliamentarians in his Cabinet.

It is his call as to whether he will limit his ministerial appointments to persons from the ruling party and the allowable number of technocratic appointees.

The President is also not morally or constitutionally required to elect a Cabinet that enjoys majority support of the National Assembly. There is no provision in the constitution or principle or convention of constitutionalism that dictates that the government must enjoy majority support in the National Assembly.

If this were the case it would mean that no confidence motions would not be necessary because the government would always have the support of the National Assembly. We know this is not always the case regardless of the electoral system operation.

P r o p o r t i o n a l representation was never

intended to ensure that a government emerges that enjoys the majority support of the National Assembly.

When the PNC in the sixties was being consistently defeated at the polls under the first-past-the-post electoral system, it was the one that advocated for PR saying that this system would ensure that the parliamen t b e t t e r reflects the will of the people.

Now that PR has failed to grant to the PNCR its majority, we should avoid confusing the nature of the e l e c t o r a l s y s t e m with desirable objectives of those who contest under such a system.

We should avoid entertaining the notion that governments should be so constituted as to be able to command majority support in the National Assembly.

Such arguments fall into a pattern of the PNC when it loses an election always calling for a change of rules.

It is well known that elections held under PR are

Dem boys seh ...

De kavakamites running out of hiding place Dem seh when you back against the wall, when you cornered and got nowhere to run and hide, you does start fuh panic and break into cold sweat.

Every day dem bareface people wha’ robbing de treasury in dis country getting cornered by Waterfalls paper. It start wid dem contractors, and continue wid dem engineers till it meet certain Ministers. Now dem running out of hiding place. And is not that dem running out. Is de hiding place running out.

Bar Bee is de chief hide man. He never like fuh people see he face. Even when he go to public function he use to hide. And he had good reason because dem boys start fuh peep dem drugs deal, and de money he collect fuh buy dem same drugs.

But dem boys would nevah tek dem eye off he and de Rat. No matter which part of de world dem try fuh hide. Dem boys got eye everywhere…even in de sky.

De kavakamaites seh de Waterfalls paper want fuh destroy Guyana and it gun cost billions fuh restore the country image. What billions?

And what image destroy? Dem is de same people who report that Guyana getting record visitors. Dem is de same people who expanding de airport fuh attract people from Africa, Europe and Asia. Is who dem think dem fooling? De billions is fuh more people

pocket.

Tek de Marriott. De real hotel construction cost is about US$28 million.

Dem tekking US$60 million. Wheh de difference going?

Don’t guess. Jagdeo was de one who claim that dem project gun bring employment fuh Guyanese. Well, not one Guyanese wukking pun de Marriott. And dem same Chinese got de nerve to tell de Waterfalls paper that reporters must ask Brazzy.

Dem boys seh that is like sending de devil fuh try case in hell. But when Jagdeo seh that Guyanese gun get wuk, he sound good, but is a case of giving sweetie a young child.

People actually believe till dem line up at de wuk place and hear that there is no vacancy. Well now that dem boys show de country all de scampishness wha going on and how dem eye pass all dem ordinary man, yuh gun see how quick dem gun run fuh pull in couple coolie man, black man and buck man.

Old people seh, always pray to have eyes to see the best in people, but dem boys at de Waterfalls paper got eyes to see not only de best, but also de beast in some people. And everybody know dem now.

Talk half and watch dem beast like chicken hawk.

prone to situations in w h i c h n o s i n g l e p a rty commands the majority of seats in the National Assembly and thus often leads to coalition governments.

Unfo r t u n a t e l y, the constitution of Guyana allows the party that wins the most votes (regardless of whether it is a majority) to secure the Presidency and thus the right to form the government.

That has always been the case since 1980. It did not change with the constitutional reform process that followed the 1997 elections.

There is nothing unusual, in Westminster systems, about a government not commanding the majority support of the National Assembly. The Executive must be distinguished from the legislature. Despite the government not commanding majority support in the National Assemb l y i t remains legitimate.

The lack of majority s u p p o r t does not delegitimize the government; it may make its work however more difficult as our recent experience in Guyana demonstrates so capably.

It sounds politically attractive to advance the view that there should be a government that enjoys the majority support of the

National Assembly. But the absence of such a situation also opens up a number of possibilities, including the necessity of compromise and negotiations between the opposition and the government.

It encourages a form of negotiated governance which ought not to be discomforting or uncomfortable to those who have long been advocating a system of shared governance.

In fact, the present dispensation in the National Assembly provides a useful litmus test as to the sincerity of those in the opposition who have long been plugging shared governance even to the extent of saying that if they won the elections they would share power with the PPP. Instead, however, of setting the stage for political cooperation and compromise, what has ensured has been political confrontation.

Actions have been taken that have inflamed political antagonisms and created an unhealthy environment both outside and inside the National Assembly.

What we have is not a yielding of political turf but a situation in which the opposition has clearly signaled that it

intends to dominate the parliament. With such a confrontational attitude, there is little hope that outside of the provisions of the Constitution that dictate consultations/ agreement between the government and the opposition as regards certain appointments, that the governm e n t w o u l d b e willing to also yield any ground when it comes to national policy.

What will ensure will be political stalemate that will only be broken to avoid a “fiscal cliff”. There is little hope that the opposition will change its attitude in parliament. The people of Guyana must therefore appreciate that this is what can happen in minority governments, especially when you have the type of opposition that we have.

Such outcomes as we are witnessing in our parliament may not always be the rule of minority governments; but it is also certainly not the exception.

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Kaieteur News

Tuesday February 05, 2013

THE FREDDIE KISSOON COLUMN

I repeat; this man is the world’s most unacceptable politician Ten months ago (Friday, April 27, 2012) the title of my column was; “This man is the most comical politician in the world.” I was referring to PPP Parliamentarian, Neend Kumar. I ended that article with the following words, “If President Ramotar does not fire Kumar then I am saying he is just as ridiculous as Kumar is.”

Let us see if Ramotar is going to remove Kumar this time over what is obviously a massive display of ignorance that must bring Ramotar and

his government into disrepute.

Guyanese are laughing at Kumar. If Ramotar doesn’t act, they will laugh at him too. Mind you; Kumar is not only a Parliamentarian but President Cheddi Jagan appointed him Director of Sports twenty-one years ago I have done three articles on Kumar in the past, two on his total ignorance on swimming pool usage by the public in Guyana, then another one on the unspeakable words he said

about Moses Nagamootoo in Parliament after the upheaval in Agricola last year.

Given those horrible words (unfortunately broadcast by one of the television newscasts), I don’t believe Nagamootoo could ever coexist with Kumar even if Guyana achieves powersharing in the future.

I always tell my friends that when I think of the mediocrity of Kumar and Bharrat Jagdeo, I am a lucky human being.

To think that sports personalities in this country have to work under Kumar.

How can any sports achiever stand Kumar? How could high-ranking officials in the public sector have accepted Bharrat Jagdeo as their boss?

As President of Guyana, Jagdeo had jurisdiction over my work place, the University of Guyana, therefore he had legal authority to speak to me but Jagdeo knew better. He knew that he couldn’t dare speak to me directly or summon me to his office.

So what is again horrible about Kumar (Dear Clive

Lloyd; do you relate to this man?) I did not know that in the Chronicle, Kumar said such a terrible thing that may have caused the world to laugh at us because I do not read the Chronicle, even the online edition.

I swear on my parents that I do not read the Chronicle and the Guyana Times. Recently I asked Adam Harris and Nigel Mc Kenzie if it was true about what I heard; the Guyana Times had printed a story on Glenn Lall, the publisher of this paper.

In the two independent dailies of Sunday, February 3, APNU Parliamentarian, Ronald Bulkan informed readers that Neil Kumar referred to the ABC countries as Argentina, Brazil and Chile with regards to the call of the ambassadors of those three countries for local government elections.

I went to the Chronicle to see if Mr. Bulkan had misrepresented Kumar. I wasn’t shocked given what I knew of Kumar.

I was laughing as I read it.

Kumar indeed referred to the

statement on local government elections in Guyana by the ABC countries and named them as Argentina, Brazil and Chile.

What appalling ignorance. When people in Guyana refer to the ABC countries they mean America, Britain and Canada.

This reference was coined since 1990 when the ambassadors of America, Britain and Canada were instrumental in putting pressure on President Desmond Hoyte to hold free and fair elections. For almost twenty-three years, the politicians, press and other people in Guyana, made references to the envoys of the ABC countries. Yet Kumar did not know which countries ABC meant.

It is unforgivable ignorance to just at random say it means Argentina, Brazil and Chile.

Where was Kumar since 1990? And why didn’t Chronicle take out that section from the online edition of the newspaper after Bulkan alerted us? Surely,

Frederick Kissoon when online readers see what came out of the mouth of Kumar they will laugh at the PPP. But come to think of it, even the Chronicle’s editor didn’t know which countries are referred to as the ABC States.

Of course even Kumar’s PPP colleagues did not know he made a comic of himself because if they did, they probably would have pulled that section out of the online Chronicle.

The reason is, of course, that they don’t read the Chron i c l e t h e m s e l v e s .

Remember the goat man didn’t know that Dominica and the Dominican Republic are two different countries.

Look at how many more stupid things the goat man did. If Ramotar does not dismiss Kumar, then surely goat bite Ramotar too.

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Kaieteur News

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Kaieteur News

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Arguments brew as source documents presented in Kissoon libel case As source documents reportedly used in Kaieteur News columnist and former University of Guyana lecturer Fredrick Kissoon’s research were presented to the court yesterday, sparks flew when the defence and lawyer for the plaintiff went head to head over the relevance and authenticity of the information, and whether the information should be accepted into evidence.

Senior Counsel Bernard De Santos, representing former President Bharrat Jagdeo, made numerous objections about the contents of the documents and their truthfulness. The reports were presented before Justice Brassington Reynolds at the Supreme Court, where Kissoon is currently being led in evidence-in-chief by Attorney at law Nigel Hughes.

Kissoon along with National Media and Publishing Company, Publisher of Kaieteur News, and Editor-in-Chief Adam Harris, is being sued for over $10M. Jagdeo in 2010, claimed libel, when he charged that in one of Kissoon’s daily columns, the writer called him an “ideological racist”.

Former President Bharrat Jagdeo

K.News columnist Fredrick Kissoon

At a previous session, Kissoon had said that he noticed a trend that IndoGuyanese holding top end positions were not being prosecuted by the state when found with job related discrepancies. He had made specific reference to Nirmal Rekha, Secretary to the Treasury, who he said was investigated by the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) on fraud allegations, but was never charged.

De Santos had argued

that Kissoon had no evidence to make such a statement. Well since Kissoon had stated that he acquired the GRA report on Rekha, he presented it yesterday.

It was entitled, “Report into irregularities committed by Nirmal Rekha”, addressed to the Commissioner General of the GRA from the Internal Audit department of that same entity.

De Santos, before the document was tendered objected to its contents. He said that the document never found Rekha guilty of any

offence.

To the first objection Hughes answered by reading pages 20-21 of the report which found that Rekha and others were involved in fraud pertaining to duty free concessions for re-migrants.

The document said, “It is a clear cut case of collusion between officers of the Ministry of Finance (which named Rekha and others) and Ms. Dundas, re-migrant officer at the Ministry of Home Affairs.”

It continued, “Rekha will have to explain the discrepancies to the Commissioner of Police who should be called in to investigate the matter.”

Hughes answered that De Santos’s second objection was a matter for cross examination. He charged that the court would make the final decision on the relevance of the content of the report after the document is admitted into evidence.

Hughes clarified that the report is merely being tendered as a source document since the defendant said that he conducted his research based on its contents.

De Santos however argued that the information brought out did not correspond with Kissoon’s original claim that Rehka had been found guilty of discrepancies. He also questioned the authenticity, certification and accuracy.

The court however intervened and reminded that the original statement by Kissoon was that IndoGuyanese in managerial positions were not being investigated by the police for work-related irregularities. He said the document is not at the stage where its relevance and accuracy as such are under examination. Justice Brassington thus overruled De Santos and admitted the GRA report.

Another document, “the Mc Dougall report” which was tendered for identification earlier in the case was also presented. The document is a United Nations-sponsored study on racial discrimination and practices in Guyana.

Kissoon said that the document was published and handed over to the government while the plaintiff

was still President.

De Santos after reading the report objected and said that the title had nothing to do with racial discrimination and practices as Kissoon said. Again augments arose with Hughes submitting that the report is only a source document. Relevance to content he urged, is for cross examination and the scrutiny of the court.

Certain parts of the report were also read out in court to show that the report, in fact, related to racial woes reportedly existing in Guyana.

The study was done from July 28 to August 1 of 2008 and it highlighted how AfroGuyanese felt in regards to equal rights and opportunities.

So far Kissoon has presented to the court documentation based on research done on the former President. From his findings, he is at the point of identifying sources and reference documents to support his conclusions.

The matter will be called again on March 4. Kissoon will continue to explain why he called Jagdeo an “Ideological racist.”

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Kaieteur News

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Tuesday February 05, 2013

Kaieteur News

Mon Repos smash-up …

Tundra driver charged with drunk driving - took vehicle without father's consent The driver of the Toyota Tundra, a motor pick-up which was involved in the horrific smash-up with a minibus Sunday night, that resulted in the death of two persons, was way over the allowable alcohol limit, according to the Guyana Police Force.

Seventeen-year-old Gidram Rasiawan, of Eccles, East Bank Demerara, was granted bail in the sum of $7,500 after he pleaded not guilty to a charge of driving under the influence of alcohol. He appeared before Magistrate Alex Moore at the Sparendaam Magistrate's Court, mere hours after the smash-up.

On Sunday night at about 21:00 hours, Rasiawan was the driver of motor pick-up GLL 6514, proceeding along the Mon Repos Public Road, allegedly at a fast rate, when he lost control of the vehicle and collided with minibus BMM 8260 which was proceeding in the opposite

direction.

The smash-up resulted in the deaths of minibus driver Godfrey Daniels, 42, of Ann's Grove, and passenger Shondell Yaw, 36, of Annandale, ECD. According to the police 14 other persons who were in the minibus were taken to the GPHC where seven were admitted for various injuries.

Hospitalized are Savitri Mohandas, a nurse attached to the GPHC; Eldon Reynolds, 78; Janel Nichol; Police Constable Nigel Roach; Ramona Sugrim; conductor, Troy Peters and Krystel Seeram.

Yesterday at the hospital, the conductor's mother, Pamela Peters, said that the badly mangled bus belongs to her. She claimed that her son does not usually conduct the minibus but somehow did on Sunday when the fatal accident occurred.

The injured Peters, whose condition is listed as stable could not talk because

his face was swollen and his lips were badly bruised.

Eldon Reynolds, a 78year-old pensioner, who was returning home when the accident occurred, is nursing a fractured right arm and abrasions to his face. His condition is listed as stable.

All the other patients, some of whom declined to speak to this publication are said to be in stable condition.

Police sources informed this newspaper that the young driver of the pick-up truck underwent a breathalyzer test shortly after the accident and was found to have an alcohol level of 1.4. The legal limit is 0.5.

The young driver in his defence for the crash, blamed the condition of the road.

But although he was granted bail, the teenager remains in police custody pending further charges, which could include causing death by dangerous driving,

Seventeen year old Gidram Rasiawan in the Toyota Tundra shortly after the crash. being an unlicenced driver and taking the vehicle without the consent of the owner.

Kaieteur News understands that Rasiawan is only licenced to drive a motorcar. His father who owns the Toyota Tundra reportedly told police that the young man took the vehicle from his home without his consent.

“The DUI charge has already been established so

that is why he was taken to court right away for that. We are awaiting the post mortem results before slapping him with the other charges,” a police source on the East Coast Demerara told this newspaper. He added that the young driver could reappear in court as early as tomorrow.

Drunk driving has been responsible for a significant number of deaths on Guyana's roads, despite the

implementation of new legislation to deal with the scourge.

A traffic official on East Coast Demerara saw the need for more breathalyzer kits to effectively police the busy thoroughfare which is the main link between the capital city and the ancient county of Berbice.

“If we get more kits, we will be able to deploy them to more areas,” the official told Kaieteur News.

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Kaieteur News

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102-year-old East Canje resident still active

By Leon Suseran

S

ukhdaia Bhuali, 102 years old, and popularly called 'Sukhdaia' and 'Sumintree Mahabir' is East Canje's oldest resident and one of Guyana's few centenarians.

She is quite an agile, talkative, and as she related, hardworking person, who until recently still did her own laundry, weeded and cleaned.

Sadly though, over the past couple of weeks, she has been confined to her bed during the nights and hammock during the day as she is not feeling so well.

'Moonsee nani' as she is popularly called, has a nasty cough and a case of the flu.

Kaieteur News checked up on this centenarian at her Lot 86 East Canefield Settlement home, where her granddaughter, Kuntee Baijnauth, has been taking care of her for the past 38 years.

Baijnauth related that Bhuali was born at Mara, East Bank Berbice, and that her parents, Bhuali Thakoor both came from India with a boatload of immigrants at Plantation Highbury. They were both agricultural labourers.

According to Baijnauth, Bhuali was undocumented five years after her birth due to her father not being able to access a registration office.

Sukdeo's parents finally moved out of Mara and it was only then that they were able to register her. She stated that this caused an inaccurate date-of-birth to be recorded on the birth certificate.

“He does always tell us that he register she five years later, but she birth certificate she born 1911—she is five years before…you know, long time the area was a lot of bushy area and to come out from there (Mara) was difficult, so my grandfather came out about five years later and registered her”. So, unofficially, the woman could be 107 years old.

She was one of two children who resided with her parents at Number 19 Village, Corentyne.

As was the Indian custom in those early days, young Bhuali was married off at the tender age of nine! “Abbey been young, young—me mama and papa been mad!”

Bhuali stated jokingly.

In those days, the custom was that East Indian families would marry their children at very young ages. She stated that she took something called 'Gownah' (a tattoo insignia/inscription made on the hand) and the bride

would return to her parents' house until she became a mature young lady, after which they return to their inlaws' home.

That union did not bear any children. The new couple lived at a place called 'New Dam', aback of the Albion, Corentyne area, which was easily accessed through the East Canje canefields back then. The couple then moved to Canefield. Her husband died in the 1970's. It was afterwards that her granddaughter started to look after her.

“She do everything for she self you know? She used to do, like, if someone get a religious work and wedding and so, she does go and prepare the place for the sermon and the people give h e r a l i t t l e money…otherwise, I does cook for she and she like to do everything for she self—wash and so”, stated Baijnauth.

“She like go to religious place—that's her hobby and she does sing religious songs and go to all the religious work—Unto now she still goes to religious places like Mandirs, funerals…she like to do a lot of prayer”.

Bhuali, prior to this period of illness, was a healthy, busy- body. “She always said that God is her doctor”, the granddaughter said. Dr R.O. Mohabir used to be her family doctor, but he passed away some time ago.

The centenarian does not eat too much meat and fish…”if she do, it's just a bit, but the most is vegetarian food and normal—and she likes her little Complan and Nutrophos but recently, she started to get hypertension, so you know, she tries with her salt and so.

Since she was young, she start to take precautions with food; she does not use plenty oil or butter— just seldom, nor does she use too much fatty or milky foods,” said Baijnauth.

When asked what she remembers from her younger days. “Me wuk a creole gang and weeding gang…me work as weeder until me stop work”, she related.

“Me mama and papa come from India”, she stated.

“Me cut cane and cleaned canal—me do a lot of hard work”.

“Anywhere [that is] religious, I gone—anywhere marriage dey, I gone”, she stated.

“Me can do work—wash house—me can do all things but she [her relative] doesn't allow me to wash house and so now—I does wash my

own house.

When she is not here and I does do all my work, iron my head- kerchief, wash my two- piece clothes”.

She receives only a Government old-age pension but no estate pension, since those schemes were not established during her time.

Va r i o u s p e r s o n s , including members of the Region Six Administration, visit the centenarian around December 30, her birthday, and take hampers and other gifts to her.

She is currently staying with her grand daughter-inlaw, Yashminie.

Bhuali surrounded by her grand daughter-in-law, Yashminie and grand daughter Kuntee Baijnauth.

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Kaieteur News

Suddie Hospital ordered to desist from dumping in Red Village The dumping of harmful hospital waste into Red Village, Onderneeming on the Essequibo Coast will now have to cease. Simultaneously, the administration of Suddie Hospital has been ordered to secure and sanitize the area.

This was according to Minister of Natural Resources and the Environment, Robert Persaud during a brief telephone interview on Saturday last.

Persaud explained that he had summoned the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to launch an investigation into the unsecured dumping of medical waste into the Amerindian community, which was established by Food for the Poor (Guyana) Incorporated.

After receiving complaints from residents, Executive members of the Alliance for Change (AFC), during February last year, visited the area and brought the people’s plight to light.

The party last visited Red Village last month, and the

area was reportedly still in an appalling condition.

The open dumpsite contains all kinds of medical waste, including bloodsoaked gauze, human bones, syringes, and materials resembling the placenta (the afterbirth). Residents had said that dogs would go to the dumpsite and return to the village with human remains.

Residents had complained of being fed up with the serious health hazards that the dumpsite posed. The site, which is just about 70 metres from the village, is not fenced or isolated from the public in any way. AFC Nigel Hughes described these as a violation of the environmental legislation and a medical crisis waiting to happen.

Villagers were particularly worried about the children of the area who would play with injurious syringes, threatening to “bore” each other with it.

Some of the affected persons had also complained of their children contracting mysterious illnesses.

The dumpsite also posed as a threat to the water supply to the village which caters for about 1,000 residents.

Whenever it rains, the waste water would run down into the conservancy where villagers do their laundry and bathing and which is shared with animals.

Ever since the establishment of the scheme, there has been no potable water and electricity.

Residents are being forced to purchase water at a cost of $2,000 per tank.

Just last week Hughes reiterated a call for the Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI) and Guyana Power and Light (GPL) to ensure that the people of Red Village are supplied with potable water and electricity.

Meanwhile, Minister Persaud said that he is very disappointed with the way that the hospital had been dumping the harmful waste.

He stressed that the Suddie Hospital administration will have to sanitize the area and desist from dumping as soon as possible.

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Viola Nursery School road angers parents

A parent fetches her child across the access road yesterday morning for school

Scattered hospital waste in the community.

The present state of the access road to the Viola Burnham Nursery School in Vryman’s Erven, New Amsterdam is deplorable. The rainy days over the past couple of days have rendered the road virtually impassable.

This poses a hazard to nursery school children, who are seen navigating the slush and huge craters along the road.

The road also provides access to the Vryman’s Erven Secondary School, just meters away.

One angry parent, Kirt Wynter, expressed frustration about the situation.

He stated that he spoke to the Regional Chairman on several occasions but only promises are being made.

One other parent, who requested anonymity, accused the administration of discrimination.

“It’s because the school name Viola Burnham Nursery; that is why they are not fixing this road—-But is innocent children coming here!”

When contacted, Region

Six Chairman, David Armogan, stated that temporary works are going to be undertaken shortly.

“We’re trying to source some crusher run to throw on the street, so I will probably take some on ‘holdover’ (since Budget 2013 has not yet been released) to use”.

He also added that the Administration is not in any way discriminating. “We built a bridge to that school; how is that discrimination?”

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Kaieteur News

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Kaieteur News

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Innovation, creativity to be hallmark of Building Expo 2013 - Minister Innovative approaches in the construction sector will be on display for the Building Expo 2013 according to Housing Minister, Irfaan Ali. As investors, consumers and exhibitors flock to the Guyana National Stadium from July 5, expectations are sure to be met as the Building Expo team is working into overdrive to build on the successes of previous shows.

He noted that even though the construction sector is currently booming, the changing demands for traditional construction materials and existing shortages are challenging the Ministry to examine innovative solutions.

“In this Building Expo we will have to look at new materials, innovation, new methods and techniques to be used in the construction sectors, so we can expose the people to a wide array of possibilities that exist in the

construction sector,” Minister Ali explained.

Ali said that this year’s event will also be geared towards consolidating the various partnerships the Housing Ministry has forged over the past years to ensure that citizens benefit from secure and sustainable development.

“The Ministry has commenced the necessary preparatory work for the staging of another successful building expo. The Ministry was planning to skip the event, but the private sector has indicated its readiness for another expo and the pressure was on us as private sector companies have already budgeted for their participation in this event,” Ali stated.

The Minister also reminded of the important role the building and construction sector is playing in the expansion of Guyana’s

economy, with its significant contribution to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).

He said, “This brings with it tremendous benefits and create a lot of employment opportunities and it has allowed skilled personnel to be actively utilized within the economy.

He explained that the benefits and rewards of the annual Building and Construction Expo are evident in the many success stories of ordinary people who started as sole traders and small entrepreneurs and for consumers who have been exposed to lucrative deals and special discounts at the event.

Now in its fourth year, the highly anticipated event brings together homeowners, prospective homeowners, representatives of the local construction, manufacturing and services sectors, as well as international participants from around the world.

Flashback on one of the many types of construction on display (File photo)

Psychiatric evaluation for threatening defendant Beres Scipio appeared before Chief Magistrate Priya Sewnarine-Beharry at the Georgetown Magistrates’ Court.

It is alleged that on February 1, at Middle Street, McDoom, Scipio threatened to kill Fitz Stepio, his father.

Police prosecutor Seon Blackman told the court that the elder Scipio and defendant are father and son.

He said that on the day in question at 41 Middle Street McDoom, the VC and the defendant had a misunderstanding, whereby the defendant became annoyed and picked up a knife and threatened to kill his father.

Beres when given a chance to relate his side of the story, told the court that he did not pick up a knife on his father. He also said he did

not threaten to kill him; he said he just threatened to go to the police station and make a report.

Fitz Scipio however told the court that he is afraid of the defendant. He told the court that his son is a drug abuser. He added that he once had sent him to a drug centre (Salvation Army) to get treatment.

The man added that his son once set his house afire.

He described his son as a “terrorist”, whom he does not want to be around.

Beres’s mother informed the court that her son has been of unsound mind for about nine years and has been a patient at the GPHC psychiatric ward.

The presiding Magistrate after listening to submissions, informed the accused that she will be sending him for a

seven-day psychiatric evaluation to decide whether or not he is fit enough to stand trial.

Beres informed the magistrate that he is fit and ready to stand trial at the moment. Sewnarine-Beharry, however told him that this has to be determined by the medical report she will receive after his psychiatric evaluation.

Police prosecutor, Seon Blackman had no objections to Beres being granted bail.

Blackman, however said that the defendant needs to relocate from his current residence.

When asked by the magistrate where he will now go and live, the defended said that he would go by a friend.

Beres will make his next court appearance on February 11.

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Kaieteur News

Page 19

IT’S JUSTICE ANTHONY CARMONA - T&T Govt nominates Criminal Court judge for Presidency

High Court Justice, Anthony Carmona (Trinidad Express) Santa Flora-born High Court Justice Anthony Carmona, who as a child thought he wouldn’t amount to much, has been nominated as the candidate to become the next President of Trinidad and Tobago.

When the decision to select Carmona, 59, was made, he was contacted while presiding in a criminal trial at the San Fernando Supreme Court yesterday morning, and asked to travel into Port of Spain sign his nomination form.

Before leaving the Second Criminal Court, Carmona, who

was advised by Prime Minister Kamla PersadBissessar beforehand that he was being considered, said he had received a telephone call that required him to leave immediately.

Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar made the announcement at a press conference held at the Diplomatic Centre, St Ann’s.00 Carmona will have to quit two jobs to take up the post.

In December 2011, Carmona learnt that he was elected a judge in the International Criminal Court in The Hague in the Netherlands.

In acknowledging his appointment back then, Carmona, speaking from the bench in the San Fernando Supreme Court, gave an insight into his life and career.

Carmona said he wrote the Common Entrance examination at the Santa Flora Government Primary school at age 11, and he never thought he would become a judge, or serve as a judicial officer in another country.

Carmona, who moved to Crest Camp, Fyzabad, during his childhood, said his

achievement was proof that a person can reach “heights unanticipated, by sheer hard work.”

Carmona thanked all who contributed to his legal growth, including former President ANR Robinson who he accompanied to America while he (Robinson) formulated statutes for the ICC. Robinson was integral in the formation of ICC which was created in 2002.

Carmona said Robinson came from a small state but he raised the idea and the world listened.

“He is a great man and an outstanding citizen,” Carmona said then.

Carmona said he had experience in The Hague, prosecuting persons charged with war crimes against humanity and genocide, including generals, camp captains and politicians.

He said he dealt with convictions from countries where “some of the greatest atrocities took place. It can all be summed up as I have been to hell and back ... I am humbled to participate in international l a w, ” Carmona said.

China Harbour seeks to clarify non-payment concern

State Minister for Transports Works Richard Azan (right) and other officials during a tour of the Palisadoes Shoreline project which was constructed by China Harbour (Jamaica Gleaner) China Harbour Engineering Company is seeking to set the record straight regarding payments to subcontractors for work completed under the Jamaica Development Infrastructure Programme.

The issue of the nonpayment of subcontractors surfaced last week during a meeting of Parliament’s Public Administration and Appropriations Committee (PAAC). PAAC chairman Edmund Bartlett indicated that he had received complaints from contractors in his constituency that they

are not being paid on time.

But executives of the National Works Agency (NWA) which contracts China Harbour, told the committee that the agency had made all 16 payments owed to China Harbour up to December. In a release yesterday afternoon China Harbour said it, has paid, in full, all subcontractors covered by the 16 payment certificates made by the NWA. China Harbour says subcontractors seem unaware that payment cannot be made until both it and the NWA have undertaken the

verification process and protocol set out in the contract between both parties. It says some subcontractors may not be sufficiently aware of the process and, on occasions, have immediately requested payment after advising that the work is completed.

China Harbour maintains that it consistently pays subcontractors within a few days of receiving such appropriate documentation and payment from the NWA. It also says it will be seeking to meet with the NWA to examine whether there is any to shorten the process.

Carmona’s appointment to the ICC became effective March last year, for a term of nine years, a position he will no longer be able to assume.

Carmona, who attended Presentation College, San Fernando, studied at University of the West Indies and Sir Hugh Wooding Law School before he became a senior counsel.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) degree in English and Political Science and Bachelors of Laws (Hons).

He worked in the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions where he said

he gained legal growth and experience. He reached the position of Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Deputy DPP, and acting DPP).

From 2001 to 2004, Carmona was an Appeals Counsel at the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague and the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

He was also legal advisor in criminal law to former President Arthur NR Robinson on matters related to the ICC, a member of the Trinidad and Tobago

Legislative Review Committee and National Alcohol and Drug Programme, and was appointed to a one-person disciplinary tribunal hearing allegations of misconduct of senior civil servants.

In 2004, Carmona was appointed a judge at the High Court of Trinidad and Tobago.

“I never dreamt at the age of eleven when I wrote Common Entrance at the Santa Flora Government School, I would one day be sitting here and even sitting in The Hague,” Carmona said.

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Kaieteur News

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Pressure mounts on Douglas in St Kitts BASSETERRE, St. Kitts, CMC – Pressure continued to mount on the Denzil Douglas administration to debate in parliament the opposition inspired motion of no confidence in his administration. The St. Kitts Christian Council and the St. Kitts Evangelical Association yesterday joined the island’s private sector in calling on the prime minister to ensure that the motion, which has been filed nearly two months ago, is debated as soon as possible.

In an open letter to Prime Minister Douglas and released to the media, the churches said it wanted the debate “without further delay and before any other business is brought to the Parliament.

“This we believe to be in the best interest of our nation at this very trying time. Mr. Prime Minister, we solicit your immediate attention and action to this matter as we consider it of highest priority and urgency,” the religious groups added.

Last week, the St. KittsNevis Chamber of Industry and Commerce also called for

the motion to be debated without any further delay.

In a statement, the private sector group reminded Prime Minister Douglas that in his address to them last month he had indicated that several matters before the parliament including the motion of no confidence could erode investor confidence in the country. It said that Prime Minister Douglas had pledged to do all within his power to avoid damage to the investment climate and the economy and that the motion of no confidence “should be heard expeditiously”.

Prime Minister Douglas in his address to the private sector last year, said that “the motion (of no confidence) will have to wait in line with what is the calendar of the House that is before the Speaker”.

But last month, Opposition Leader Mark Brantley said the motion should take precedence, adding “it is obvious under established practice and procedure in the House the motion of no confidence should take precedent over something like a Senators bill.

PM Denzil Douglas “I don’t see the urgency I don’t see the importance of an increase in Senators bill in light of the motion that is outstanding,” he said then.

Parliament last week passed the Senators Bill by a slim 8-7 margin and is likely to deal with the national budget at the next sitting.

Last week, dismissed senior government minister Dr. Timothy Harris said he was daring Prime Minister Dr.

Douglas to allow parliament to debate the motion.

Harris, who was fired for failing to adhere to government policies and programmes, said that Dr. Douglas does not command the support of a majority of legislators in the parliament “and should now do the honourable thing and resign, or call a general election.

“Put it to the people. He does not command a majority of Members of Parliament at this particular moment in time and so if he want to talk about procedures and support let him put that to the test, ,”

Timothy said on a local radio station here.

Harris and another senior government legislator Sam Condor have openly disagreed with a number of government measures including the national budget and the decision to increase the number of senators in the legislative chamber.

Last Thursday, Condor, the deputy prime minister, resigned from the Cabinet with immediate effect.

Prime Minister Douglas told parliament that Harris had asked him to resign as head of the government last

December and accused the former minister of being part of a “conspiracy to bring the government to an end” and establish a unity government in St. Kitts-Nevis.

In their statement, the religious groups said they had met with the Prime Minister as well as Harris and Condor in separate meetings, adding that the dismissal and resignation of the two senior ministers “has further heightened this political tension in our nation, (and) we are of the firm view that we are facing a serious political crisis.”

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (BGIS) — Barbados has been encouraged to market itself as a tourism destination in Chile.

Chilean ambassador to Barbados, Luis Fernando Ayala Gonzalez, made this suggestion when he paid a courtesy call on Minister of Foreign Affairs and Foreign, Senator Maxine McClean at her ministry’s headquarters.

“You have a market in Chile. There are millions of Chileans earning a high income and they are travelling everywhere — to Europe, Asia and the Caribbean. But, when Chileans think [of the] Caribbean, they think only of Cuba and the Dominican Republic, so Barbados needs to start promoting itself in Chile,” Ayala said.

He continued: “Promote more than the sea and your

beautiful beaches. Promote your island as an Englishspeaking destination which gives Chileans the opportunity to learn and practice English outside the classroom through outdoor activities ...Our people would love to come.” Welcoming the suggestion, McClean indicated that Barbados was indeed pursuing the South American market and said that the island would be more than happy to explore the Chilean niche.

The foreign affairs minister noted: “Chile is located in the southern hemisphere, and its winter season coincides with Barbados’ summer. So, our island is the perfect destination for Chileans during the July and August period, although Chileans would be invited to come year-round.”

She further reasoned that polo, diving, dining and golf were some of the many activities that Chileans could enjoy on the island. Stressing that while Barbados offered a high-end product, McClean explained: “We cater to carious price points as we have many three and four star hotels, guest houses and apartments on the island.”

On matters of bilateral cooperation, the Chilean envoy observed that Barbados has been a good market for products from his homeland and proposed that Barbadian entrepreneurs should visit his country to promote it as a destination, along with its services and products.

McClean concurred that there was a need for more business-to- business and people-to-people relations between the countries.

Barbados urged to target Chile as a tourism market

IMF mission arrives for 11day visit (Jamaica Gleaner) A team from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) arrived in the island yesterday. The mission, being headed by Jan Kees Martijn, will be in Jamaica until February 15.

The Finance Ministry says the mission follows extensive discussions by Jamaican officials with representatives of the IMF in Washington, D.C. It also comes after efforts to reach a staff level agreement on a Letter of Intent for Jamaica.

The Finance Ministry says the Letter of Intent will form the basis of Jamaica’s submission to the IMF Board for approval of a four-year Extended Fund Facility at the earliest possible time.

Peter Phillips (left), finance minister, and Jan Kees Martijn, mission chief, International Monetary Fund, at a press conference at the Ministry of Finance in Kingston However, before the agreement can be sealed the Government needs to take certain action.

Among them are measures concerning tax reform and a containment of the public sector wage bill.

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Kaieteur News

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Elections, jobs critical for Haiti, says outgoing UN envoy PORT AU PRINCE, Haiti — The outgoing head of the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Haiti said that, during his 20-months tenure, security had greatly improved in the Caribbean country, but delayed elections and unemployment still threatened stability.

In an interview with UN Radio shortly before the end of his term on 31 January,

Mariano Fernández, who served as the special representative of the secretary-general for Haiti, said that he had recently highlighted the short-term threat posed by delayed legislative and local elections because political polarization was exacerbated by the issue.

“We have had a delay that we have declared almost unacceptable because the

elections should have taken place 14 months ago,” stressed Fernández, warning of the threat to stability posed by the situation. In the longterm view, employment, however, was the major issue.

“They have a work force of 4.2 million people and in formal jobs they have only 200,000,” he said, adding: “So you have around 4 million people living in a subsistence

Over 1,000 eye surgeries performed under Jamaica/Cuba programme (Jamaica Observer) Some 1,250 persons with specific eye conditions, benefitted from 1,410 procedures conducted under the Jamaica/Cuba Eye Care programme during 2012.

Coordinator of the programme, Gregory Thomas, in an interview with JIS News also informed that over 16,000 consultations took place last year.

The programme, which

seeks to help reduce preventable blindness in adults, evolved from the fiveyear Jamaica/Cuba Eye Care Project, which previously saw persons being screened for eye conditions in Jamaica and sent to Cuba for treatment.

Launched in January 2010, the programme offers surgical treatment for people suffering from three specific conditions: Cataracts, Diabetic Retinopathy

(damage to the retina caused by complications of diabetes mellitus) and Pterygium (a non-cancerous fleshy growth, usually on the surface of the eye) free of cost.

Thomas further noted that since the programme’s inception, over 46,000 consultations have been done; over 4, 200 surgeries have been performed; and over 3,790 patients have received surgical treatment. (JIS)

economy, in a survival economy or living from remittances from the Haitians in exile, the Diaspora.”

“This is something that we should help the government and the private sector and the Haitian people to face and to move forward on because this is a permanent source of instability,” he stressed.

Asked about the major accomplishments of the UN mission, known as MINUSTAH, during his tenure, he said that its greatest contribution was in greatly improving security and strengthening the police and other rule of law institutions.

“Security has improved a lot,” he said, pointing out that Haiti now ranked fourth in the index of the lowest number of homicides per capita in Central America and the Caribbean. “The challenges in security are now mainly the gangs in the some shanty towns around Port-au-Prince and the family violence, the

abuse against women.

“But political violence doesn’t exist, kidnapping has been reduced and the cases of homicide are concentrated around Port- au-Prince,” he said, adding: “The rest of the country is very peaceful.”

He said that cholera has also been radically reduced, with fears of a spike in transmission following hurricanes Isaac and Sandy fortunately not coming to fruition.

He noted that SecretaryGeneral Ban Ki-moon recently launched a campaign with the Ministers of Health of Haiti and the Dominican Republic to rid their common island of the disease during the coming year, appointing renowned United States physician Paul Farmer, to lead it.

“I think we will have a serious success,” he said.

The Security Council established MINUSTAH in June 2004 to restore a secure and stable environment, to

Mariano Fernández promote the political process, to strengthen Haiti’s government institutions and rule-of-law-structures, as well as to promote and to protect human rights.

It has also helped support Haiti’s authorities with recovery efforts in the wake of the massive earthquake that struck in January 2010, as well as supporting preparations for presidential elections held in 2011.

Fernández, a native of Chile, took the reins of MINUSTAH in April 2011 from Edmond Mulet of Guatemala, who took on the position after the earthquake.

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Kaieteur News

Tuesday February 05, 2013

England’s King Richard III found after 500 years (Reuters) - A skeleton with a cleaved skull and a curved spine entombed under a car park is that of Richard III, archaeologists said yesterday, solving a 500-yearold mystery about the final resting place of the last English king to die in battle.

Cast by Shakespeare as a deformed tyrant who murdered two princes in the Tower of London, Richard was slain in a bid to keep his crown at the 1485 Battle of Bosworth Field, immortalised by the words: “A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!”

In one of the most significant archaeological finds of recent English history, a team from the University of Leicester said evidence showed a skeleton found last year in excavations of a mediaeval friary under a city car park was that of Richard.

“It’s the academic conclusion ... that beyond reasonable doubt the individual exhumed at Grey

Friars in September 2012 is indeed Richard III, the last Plantagenet king of England,” lead archaeologist Richard Buckley said.

The skeleton had 10 wounds, eight of which were to the head clearly inflicted on the battlefield. A photograph showed a sword had cleaved away part of the rear of the skull. A metal fragment was found between Richard’s vertebrae.

After the battle, the victor, the future King Henry VII, had Richard’s naked body exposed to the people of Leicester to show the battle was won, ending the bloody 30-year civil conflict known as The Wars of the Roses between the houses of York and Lancaster.

Other wounds were consistent with being caused after death when his body was taken from the battlefield to the nearby city of Leicester on the back of a horse. All of the wounds were from swords or daggers and it appeared his hands had been bound.

Confirmation the bones were Richard’s hinged on DNA taken from the skeleton matching that of Michael Ibsen, a Canadian-born furniture maker in London who genealogists said was the direct descendant of Richard’s sister, Anne of York.

Admirers of Richard hope that the discovery will fuel interest in the mediaeval monarch and dispel Shakespeare’s physically impaired protagonist who said: “And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover ... I am determined to prove a villain.”

CROOKED BONES REVEAL KING’S SECRET The curvature of the spine, so ruthlessly mocked

by Shakespeare and famously depicted by Laurence Olivier, was striking.

After a detailed presentation focusing on the life, wounds and physique of Richard, Buckley, announced his conclusion to world media amidst cheers and applause.

The project almost ended

The skeleton, unearthed in a dig last September, showed evidence of the same curvature of the spine and battle injuries thought to have been suffered by the last Plantagenet king

prematurely, but funds from countries ranging from the United States and Germany to Australia and Belgium kept it afloat.

Richard, who died aged 32 after just two years on the throne, will be interred at Leicester Cathedral, which traces its history to a Saxon bishop in AD 680, in line with guidelines about burying bodies close to where they are exhumed.

The grey, concrete car park with its red-brick walls and a payment hut, under which the bones were found contrasts sharply with the grandeur of traditional sepulchres for English kings and queens at Windsor Castle and Westminster Abbey.

Asked whether the prime minister agrees with some Conservative MPs who said they believe the late king should receive a state burial, a spokesman for David Cameron said: “The decision on burial is a matter for Leicester University who hold the licence to exhume the remains.”

The evidence ends the centuries-old mystery which has fascinated historians in Britain and around the world and which has provided material for a welter of legends, one of which maintained the body was dug up in the reign of Henry VIII, thrown in a river and the stone coffin used as a horse trough.

One of the most famous English kings, Richard’s grave, which was lost after Henry VIII ordered the monasteries dissolved, had been as elusive as his reputation. Richard was cast

by Shakespeare as a monster but supporters say he was

A portrait of King Richard III enlightened and unfairly maligned by a victorious House of Tudor.

“INFAMOUS RICHARD” There was also a DNA match with another unidentified descendant of Anne of York who wished to remain anonymous. The genetic match was especially significant as it was a rare type of DNA found in only a few percent of the population, said Turi King, a geneticist at the university.

“It’s really difficult to come to grips with the fact that there is some part of you that is part of somebody as famous or infamous as Richard III,” Ibsen said in an interview, adding that he was stunned to find his royal connection.

Unlike his mediaeval ancestor, Ibsen said he did not plan to put forward his

family’s claim to the throne: “I think our chances are long gone.” Buckingham Palace declined comment on the importance of the discovery, which is expected to increase interest in Richard and bring more visitors to Leicester.

The remains of the king were put on display on a black velvet cloth encased in a glass box for the media and other guests in a small room with a worn red carpet that is part of the University of Leicester’s library.

There was reverential silence as two security guards manned the door and a chaplain looked on. No photography was allowed as a mark of respect to the remains of the man who once ruled England.

While the findings may solve the mystery about the whereabouts of the grave of (Continued on page 24)

Venezuela’s Chavez improving after tough cancer fight: Fidel Castro (Reuters) - Former Cuban leader Fidel Castro said Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is getting “much better” as he recovers from cancer surgery almost two months ago in Havana, Communist Party newspaper Granma reported yesterday.

Castro, 86, spoke to reporters as he voted on Sunday in Cuba’s parliamentary elections in one of his increasingly rare public appearances.

He said he gets daily reports on the condition of Chavez, who is Cuba’s top socialist ally and benefactor.

“He is much better, recovering. It has been a tough fight but he is

improving,” the frail, whitebearded Castro was quoted as saying.

“We have to cure him.

Chavez is very important for his country and for Latin America,” he said. Chavez, 58, is battling cancer in the pelvic region discovered in June 2011 by Cuban doctors.

He has undergone four cancer-related surgeries on the communist island, the last a six-hour operation on December 11 in Havana.

Castro’s description of Chavez’s condition matches increasingly positive public statements from Venezuelan officials, but the Venezuelan leader has not been seen nor heard from publicly since the

surgery.

He was unable to return to Venezuela on January 10 to be sworn in for a new term in office, which he won in an October election. Castro, who ruled Cuba for 49 years after taking power in a 1959 revolution, has been battling his own health problems since undergoing emergency surgery for intestinal bleeding in July 2006.

He resigned the presidency in February 2008 and was succeeded by younger brother Raul Castro.

The elder Castro still meets occasionally with visiting leaders and plays a behindthe-scenes role but rarely appears in public.

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Kaieteur News

Page 23

Syrian opposition chief says offers Assad peaceful exit (Reuters) - Syrian opposition leader Moaz Alkhatib urged Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s government yesterday to start talks for its departure from power and save the country from greater ruin after almost two years of bloodshed.

Seeking to step up pressure on Assad to respond to his offer of talks - which dismayed some in his own opposition coalition, Alkhatib said he would be ready to meet the president’s deputy.

“I ask the regime to send Farouq al-Shara - if it accepts the idea - and we can sit with him,” he said, referring to Syria’s vice president who has implicitly distanced himself from Assad’s crackdown on mass unrest that became an armed revolt.

Speaking after meeting senior Russian, U.S. and Iranian officials, Alkhatib said none of them had an answer to the 22-month-old crisis and Syrians must solve it themselves.

“The issue is now in the state’s court...to accept negotiations for departure, with fewer losses,” the Syrian National Coalition leader told Al Arabiya television.

The moderate Islamist preacher announced last week he was prepared to talk to Assad’s representatives.

Although he set several conditions, the move broke a taboo on opposition contacts

with Damascus and angered many in its ranks who insist on Assad’s departure as a precondition for negotiation.

Alkhatib said it was not “treachery” to seek dialogue to end a conflict in which more than 60,000 people have been killed, 700,000 have been driven from their country and millions more are homeless and hungry.

“The regime must take a clear stand (on dialogue) and we say we will extend our hand for the interest of people and to help the regime leave peacefully,” he said in separate comments to Al Jazeera television.

Assad announced last month what he said were plans for reconciliation talks to end the violence but - in a speech described by U.N. Syria envoy Lakhdar Brahimi as narrow and uncompromising - he said there would be no dialogue with people he called traitors or “puppets made by the West”.

Syria’s defense minister said the army had proved it would not be defeated in its confrontation with rebels but declined to say whether it would respond to an Israeli air strike last week.

Security sources said the Israelis bombed a convoy of arms destined for Assad’s ally Hezbollah, a sworn enemy of Israel, in neighboring Lebanon. Syria said the attack struck vehicles and buildings

Syrian opposition leader Moaz Alkhatib at a military research center near Lebanon’s border.

Syria’s uprising erupted in March 2011 with largely peaceful protests, escalating into a civil war pitting mainly Sunni Muslim rebels against Assad, who is from Syria’s Alawite minority. His family has ruled Syria for 42 years.

ANGERAT IRAN The violence has divided major powers, with Russia and China blocking U.N. Security Council draft resolutions backed by the United States, European Union and Sunni Muslim Gulf Arab states that could have led to U.N. sanctions isolating Assad. Shi’ite Iran has remained his strongest regional supporter.

Alkhatib met Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar

Iran says Israel will regret Syria air strike Saeed Jalili, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council

(Reuters) - Iran told Israel yesterday it would regret its air strike against Syria last week, without spelling out whether Iran or its ally planned any military response.

“They will regret this recent aggression,” Saeed Jalili, Secretary of Iran’s

Supreme National Security Council, told a news conference in Damascus a day after holding talks there with President Bashar al-Assad.

Jalili likened Israel’s attack on a military compound northwest of Damascus on Wednesday to previous conflicts including its 34-day

war with Lebanon’s Shi’ite militant group Hezbollah in 2006, all battles that he said Israel had lived to regret.

“Today, too, both the people and the government of Syria are serious regarding the issue. And also the Islamic community is supporting Syria,” he said.

Jalili said Iran, in its current role as head of the NonAligned Movement, would work on Syria’s behalf on the international stage in response to the attack.

Israeli Defence Minister Ehud Barak said on Sunday the attack on a Syrian arms complex showed Israel was serious about preventing the flow of heavy weapons into Lebanon, appearing to acknowledge for the first time that Israel had carried out the strike.

Diplomats, Syrian rebels and security sources say Israeli jets bombed a convoy near the Lebanese border, apparently hitting weapons destined for Hezbollah.

Salehi, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Vice President Joe Biden at a security conference in Germany at the weekend.

“Iran’s stance is unacceptable and I mentioned to the foreign minister that we are very angry with Iran’s support for the regime,” Alkhatib said.

He said he asked Salehi to pass on his offer of negotiations - based on the acceptance of the Assad government’s departure - to Damascus. The two men also

discussed the need to prevent Syria’s crisis spreading into a regional conflict between Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims, he said.

“We will find a solution, there are many keys. If the regime wants to solve (the crisis), it can take part in it. If it wants to get out and get the people out of this crisis, we will all work together for the interest of the people and the departure of the regime.”

One proposal under discussion was the formation of a transitional government, Alkhatib said, without specifying how he thought that could come about. World powers agreed a similar formula seven months ago but then disagreed over whether that could allow Assad to stay on as head of state.

Activists reported clashes between the army and rebel fighters to the east of Damascus on Monday and heavy shelling of rebel-held areas of the central city of Homs.

The Jobar neighborhood, on the southwestern edge of Homs, was hit by more than 100 rockets on Monday morning,

an opposition activist said.

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said at least 90 people were killed by dusk yesterday.

It said 180 people were killed across the country on Sunday, including 114 rebel fighters and soldiers.

Sunday’s death toll included 28 people killed in the bombardment of a building in the Ansari district of the northern city of Aleppo.

Assad has described the rebels as foreign-backed Islamist terrorists and said a precondition for any solution is that Turkey and Sunniruled Gulf Arab states stop funding, sheltering and arming his foes.

The majority of the insurgents are Islamists but those affiliated with al Qaeda are smaller in number, although their influence is growing. For that reason, Western states have been loath to arm the rebels despite their calls for Assad’s ouster.

Rebels and activists say that Iran and the Lebanese Shi’ite militant movement Hezbollah have sent fighters to reinforce Assad’s army - an accusation that both deny.

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Kaieteur News

ENGLAND’S KING RICHARD...

From page 22 Richard, the last Plantagenet king of England remains a complex figure whose life, made famous by Shakespeare’s history play, deeply divides opinion.

In a sign of the widespread public interest in Richard, photographs of his skull were published on the front pages of national newspapers in Britain on Monday and the academic briefing on the find was shown live on television news channels.

A tough soldier and popular in northern England, Richard was crowned at Westminster Abbey in July 1483 after replacing his 12year-old nephew Edward V on the throne after claims that the young prince and his brother, the sons of Richard’s elder brother Edward IV, were illegitimate.

The two boys later disappeared from the Tower of London, and their fate is one of the greatest

unanswered historical questions. However, Richard has long been blamed for ordering, or even carrying out, the murder of the “Princes in the Tower”.

SHAKESPEARE’S TYRANT RICHARD Much of that is thanks to Shakespeare’s “The Tragedy of King Richard the Third”, which portrays him as a power-crazed, evil hunchback who killed off his rivals to get to the throne. Richard has been played by a multitude of actors including Olivier, David Garrick and Kenneth Branagh. Lines from the play include “Now is the Winter of our discontent” as well as “Where Eagles Dare” which became a film title.

His supporters say Shakespeare’s play is misleading, written as it was over a century later when Queen Elizabeth I, the granddaughter of Henry Tudor, who became Henry VII after his victory over Richard

at Bosworth, was on the throne.

“People can see he’s been done a massive injustice and I think it gets them angry and I think they want people to look at the facts about this man and change everything that we’ve ... been told about him,” said Philippa Langley, of the Richard III Society which launched the four-year search for the lost king.

The level of international interest in the project was shown when the money nearly ran out and supporters from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Belgium, Germany, Austria, the Netherlands and Britain came forward to help. Langley’s mission is to re-write history.

“No disrespect to Olivier because he was a brilliant actor, but that portrayal of Richard III is going to be consigned to the dustbin of history. (He) was a mediaeval man and mediaeval king,” said Langley, adding: “He just wasn’t the monster of Tudor legend.”

And the answer to the burning question of whether Richard killed the princes in the Tower?

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Pakistani girl shot by Taliban doing well after surgery: doctors Malala Yousufzai

(Reuters) - A Pakistani schoolgirl who underwent reconstructive surgery in Britain after being shot in the head by the Taliban said yesterday she felt much better and was focused on her mission to help others.

A team of doctors carried out a five-hour operation on fifteen-year-old Malala Yousufzai on Saturday to mend parts of her skull with a titanium plate and help restore hearing on her left side with a cochlear implant.

Speaking 24 hours after waking up from surgery at Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham, central England, Yousufzai said she was already walking around.

“I can walk a little bit, I can talk and I’m feeling better,” she said from her hospital bed in a video clip released by the hospital.

“I think I will just get better very soon, and there will be no problem. The thing is my mission is the same, to help people, and I will do that,” she said.

Yousufzai was shot in the head at point-blank range in October by the Taliban for advocating girls’ education, and was brought to Britain for treatment.

Doctors at the hospital said they were impressed by her recovery so far and hopeful she would be discharged fairly soon, describing her as focused and

enthusiastic.

“She should be feeling sorry for herself 24 hours after an operation like that, not talking about helping other people,” said Dave Rosser, the hospital’s medical director.

The attack on Yousufzai, as she left school in the Swat valley, drew widespread international condemnation, and the schoolgirl has become a symbol of resistance to the Taliban’s efforts to deny women education and other rights.

“There’s still a lot of support (for Yousufzai) coming in, a lot of communication coming in from around the world,” Rosser said.

North Korea nuclear test would face “firm” U.N. action: South Korea

South Korea’s President Lee Myung-bak (C) talks with officials at an underground bunker, which is the national crisis management center at the presidential Blue House in Seoul. REUTERS/Blue House/Handout (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council is united on North Korea’s nuclear arms program and will undoubtedly approve tough measures against Pyongyang if it carries out a new atomic test as expected, South Korean U.N. Ambassador

Kim Sook said yesterday.

“The North Korean nuclear test seems to be imminent,” Kim, who is president of the Security Council this month, told reporters.

“Obviously there are very busy activities going on at the

(North Korean) nuclear test site, and everybody’s watching.”

“Everybody is unified and they are firm and resolute,” he said. “I would expect very firm and strong measures to be taken ... once they go ahead with such provocation.”

Tuesday February 05, 2013

MTV CHANNEL 14/ CABLE 65 Sign on 05:30 hrs - Dharma Kai Awaz: The Voice of Dharma 06:00 hrs - Islamic Perspective 06:30 hrs - News Update 07:00 hrs - DAYBREAK 08:00 hrs - Dabi’s musical 08:30 hrs - Avon Video & DVD: Avatar 09:00 hrs - BBC World News 09:15 hrs - Top Notch Music Break 09:30 hrs - Caribbean Temptation Music Mix 10:00 hrs - Amanda’s music break 10:30 hrs - Clairan’s Ent. Music Hour 11:00 hrs - National Geographic 12:00 hrs - The View

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13:00 hrs - Weekly Digest 13:30 hrs - The young and The restless 14:30 hrs - Days of Our Lives 15:00 hrs - General Hospital 16:00 hrs - The Bold and The beautiful 16:30 hrs - Cartoons 17:00 hrs - Birthday & other greetings 17:15 hrs - Death Announcements/ In Memoriam 17:30 hrs - CNN News 18:00 hrs - Pulse Beat: Presentation of Ministry of Health 18:30 hrs - Ma Ke Mahema 19:00 hrs - Focus on GRA 19:30 hrs - News Update 20:30 hrs - DJ Stress Quiz 21:30 hrs - Islam for Guyana

22:00 hrs - Movie: Child’s play 23:00 hrs - News update 23:30 hrs - Movie: Child’s Play continues Sign Off DTV CHANNEL 8 08:55 hrs. Sign On 09:00 hrs. GMA 10:00 hrs. Live! With Kelly and Michael 11:00 hrs. The Ricki Lake Show 12:00 hrs. The View 13:00 hrs. Prime News 13:30 hrs. The Young and the Restless 14:30 hrs. The Bold and the Beautiful 15:00 hrs. The Talk 16:00 hrs. Steve Harvey 17:00 hrs. The Ellen DeGeneres Show

Tuesday February 05, 2013 ARIES (Mar. 21–Apr. 19) Patiently waiting for a better time to take action isn’t your normal style, but you might consider a more passive stance now as the energy shifts. However, this doesn’t mean doing nothing.

TAURUS (Apr. 20–May 20) Although your antennae extend into the social sphere today you might not be ready to make any definite plans yet.

You just know that you want to spend more time with friends and your community now that interactive Mercury is gallivanting through your 11th House of Networking.

GEMINI (May 21–June 20) You may be unwittingly building your castle on shifting sands now. Even if you are creating a strong foundation that can withstand change, it’s still critical to know that you will be steadily supported in your work.

CANCER (June 21–July 22) You might think that you have the ability now to absorb data directly from your environment as if you were lying on a beach and soaking in the sunshine. Overt action is not needed today; instead, use your intuition.

LEO (July 23–Aug. 22) Unfamiliar emotional territory can be intriguing today, yet you might be too busy to explore something that distracts you from a project.

VIRGO (Aug. 23–Sept. 22) You are entering a phase now where relationships bring challenges because others may seem confused or unwilling to make a commitment.

LIBRA (Sept. 23–Oct. 22) Yo u r p r e s e n c e a l o n e may be healing to others today, but, ironically, you might not know what you can do to help yourself. Your lack of certainty could raise issues of self-doubt, making it difficult to know where to start. picture will develop in time.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23–Nov. 21) Transforming your vision into a real journey can be the most important part of your life in the weeks ahead. If you are already thinking about your future, it’s probably time to move your planning to the next phase.

SAGIT (Nov. 22–Dec. 21) You may be uncomfortable with energetic shifts that pull you into a more contemplative phase as mental Mercury slips into sensitive Pisces.

CAPRI (Dec. 22–Jan. 19) The next several weeks might bring unexpected complications as the pace of life speeds up. Normally, you’re a champ at long-term planning, but now your focus shifts to what’s happening day to day.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20–Feb. 18) It’s time to soothe your nervous system by slowing down and gaining a deeper understanding of your own self-worth.

PISCES (Feb. 19–Mar. 20) It’s a very emotional time with logical Mercury moving into your sign for an extended stay through mid-April. Your dreams are growing even more vivid than usual, but it could be difficult to apply what you experience in your imagination to real life.

18:00 hrs. Awakening 18:30 hrs. World News 19:00 hrs. Greetings and Announcements 20:00 hrs. Alliance on the Move 21:00 hrs. NCIS 22:00 hrs. NCIS: Los Angeles (New Episode) 23:00 hrs. Vegas (New Episode) 00:00 hrs. Sign Off

Guides are subjected to change without notice

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Kaieteur News

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Hotel Tower giving away a car The winning prize

Come March 1, persons visiting Hotel Tower, Edge and the Flame will get a chance to drive away in a brand new Toyota IST, according to the Hotel’s Promotion Manager, DJ Ranny.

DJ Ranny made this disclosure yesterday during a press conference at the

hotel. He said the Toyota IST is being given away on the Hotel’s anniversary which is on March 1. Apart from the grand drawing, DJ Ranny said that there is currently a weekly consolation prize being given away to customers visiting the hotel.

“Come as you usually do and take advantage of this

promotion,” the Hotel’s promotion manager encourages persons.

He explained, “All you have to do is purchase your band as you enter the club, collect your coupon. Or you can book a room at the hotel or dine at the Flame restaurant and collect your coupon and fill it out.”

Accused leads defence in wedding house murder trial Justice Navindra Singh, who is presiding over the case of Chanderpaul Chateram, rejected a no case submission by lawyer for the defence, Peter Hugh. As a result, the accused was asked to lead a defence when the matter was called at the High Court.

Chateram who is charged for the murder of Gopaul Singh, called “Porridge,” denied the murder allegation leveled against him. He told the court that he had just attended a wedding that was being held on the East Coast of Demerara when someone arrested him and took him to the Vigilance Police Station.

He spoke of what took place at the police station and what he was told to do.

On September 14, 2007 at Good Hope East Coast Demerara, Chateram and the deceased had an argument which resulted in a scuffle. It is alleged that during that fight the accused lashed the deceased across the head with a bottle. The injured man was taken to the hospital but died some days later.

According to law, one is held accountable up to one year and a day after an injury may have been inflicted on a person. As a result, the accused was charged for murder.

Eight persons testified in the matter. The main witness, Ronald Dhanraj, testified to seeing when the deceased was struck during the fight. He claimed that he apprehended the

accused and took him to the police station. Dhanraj was attending the said wedding.

A doctor who did the post mortem examination also testified.

The defence is however claiming that the prosecution failed to show the connection between the fight and the cause of the victim’s death. The prosecution is however saying that the injury sustained during the fight could have caused the deceased’s demise.

The matter will continue today when the defence lawyer is expected to make final statements. He would be followed by the prosecution. The court will then sum up the case before the jury deliberates.

Probation for larceny defendant A 20-year-old man was placed on three years’ probation by Chief Magistrate Priya SewnarineBeharry, at the Georgetown Magistrates’ Court. Carl Melville is accused of stealing a pair of boxer shorts from Rani’s Fashion.

The charge read that on February 1, he stole a pair of boxer shorts valued at $1,000 from Rani’s Fashion of Charlotte Street, Georgetown.

The defendant appeared baffled at the reading of the charge.

The young man, who had no legal representation, pleaded guilty to the charge.

He offered an explanation for his actions.

Melville told the court that he works at the store but that he was never paid his salary, hence he became frustrated and stole the shorts.

“I didn’t know what fu do”. The prosecution however, did not furnish the court with any facts relating to the case.

The young man’s uncle subsequently stood up, asked the court for some time to get an attorney, so as to provide his nephew with appropriate legal representation.

Melville’s uncle told the

court that his nephew may be a first offender whose mother is deceased and whose father lives in St. Maarten. He noted that his nephew currently resides at his home, under his care.

The Chief Magistrate after listening to submissions placed the young man on three years’ probation and told him that he has to be a part of the Skills and Knowledge forYouth Empowerment (SKYE) project.

She also ordered the defendant to be on good behaviour or he would be brought back to the court for sentencing.

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Kaieteur News

APNU demands Govt. address corruption in budget plans …Greenidge says no easy passage without talks Opposition coalition A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) has called on the government to address mounting cases of corruption and other vexing issues as it plans for the 2013 budget.

However, the coalition yesterday lamented the fact that the government has failed to back up its promise to meet with the opposition to craft the budget and to ensure that funds go to priority projects.

As a result, APNU has sounded the warning that there would be no easy passage of the budget if the opposition is not satisfied with what is presented.

After a meeting on November 21 last year, APNU agreed to make a written submission to the Ministry of Finance regarding what it would like to see addressed.

“The submissions were made as promised and APNU called on the Government to take account of the spiraling cost of living; crime; corruption; lawlessness and discrimination and the simmering spirit of rebellion that form the background against which the Budget is to be c r a f t e d , ” A P N U ’s C a r l Greenidge said yesterday.

However, since those submissions were made APNU has heard nothing from the Finance Ministry, and so Greenidge concluded that “there has been no effort, on the part of the Government, to honour their pledge to have dialogue.”

Greenidge warned that this lack of consultation will have serious implications for the consideration of the Budget proposals and its passage through the National Assembly.

It was on November 9, last, that the Minister of Finance invited representatives of the majority in the National Assembly to a meeting to discuss the 2013 Budget.

At that November 21 meeting, Greendige said there were open and frank discussions. He said that the government team comprised Prime Minister Samuel Hinds, Finance Minister Dr Ashni Singh, Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon and Minister of Housing and Water Irfaan Ali. Subsequent to the meeting, APNU said it submitted a 13-page document early this year but there has been no further communication from the Minister.

Greenidge said that there should have been a meeting every fortnight in keeping with the agreement made at the November 21 meeting.

Among the issues APNU want addressed in the budget, are the completion of the reform of the tax system, and the status of the body set up to look at the burden of taxation including the reduction of VAT. Greenidge charged that the body has not been having meetings, or at least there has been no report since.

The coalition also

proposed measures to return the Nationa l I n s u r a n c e Scheme (NIS) to financial viability; minimum wage; Old Age Pension; job creation; upgrading the physical environment and infrastructure of our communities; the radica l revamping of the system for the selection and sequencing of capital projects and for the efficient management and monitoring of the implementation of those projects; the proper management of national resources, including an independent institutional review of the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission, and related institutions; establishing a Public Procurement Commission; establishing and enforcing acceptable sta n d a r ds of financial administration; depoliticisation and reform of the manage m e n t a n d o v e r s i g ht of public c o r p o r a t i o n s a n d their access to resources; the unjustifiable politicised treatment of the regions and their priorities; and the rising internal debt.

APNU reiterated that the National Assembly is the authority to dictate how public funds are used.

As such, the coalition warned that the government must know that if it locks out the opposition from the budget planning, it cannot expect that the budget that will be presented is the same budget that would be passed by the opposition-controlled National Assembly.

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Central High receives gifts from NY Chapter

Last Wednesday morning, a balmy day in Georgetown, Guyana, the Central High School located on Smyth Street was the recipient of gifts from its overseas Alumni.

The gifts included Science equipment and Digital Projectors and Screens which came from the New York Chapter and from Alumna Celestine Benjamin.

At a simple presentation ceremony in the office of the headmistress Ms. Balroop and witnessed by alumni of the local and New York chapters, members of staff, representatives of the Prefect body and the media, the items were presented by Alumna Ms. Jacquelyn Hamer, executive member of the New York Chapter and Mr Horace

Cummings, Chairman of the local chapter.

Mr. Cummings lauded the integrated efforts of the local, New York and Toronto Chapters for supporting the general development of Central High School. He spoke about Alumna Celestine Benjamin who spearheaded a project to raise funds during Reunion 2012, through the sale of hand bands bearing the CHS insignia. The money went towards the purchasing of digital projectors.

He also encouraged the students to use the equipment efficiently. Ms Hamer added that she expects the students to take good care of their gifts.

Ms. Balroop, being gracious in receipt on behalf

of the school, expressed her gratitude to the general body of the Alumni for coming on board to contribute in maintaining the high academic standard of Central High and in some way attempt to replicate its prestige of yesteryear.

She also pledged her continued support and the support of her staff to work closely with the local chapter and by extension the overseas chapters, towards those endeavours.

The local chapter will on March 3, 2013 be holding elections to elect a president and executive to charter its course and to serve as the link that binds foreign chapters to the institution here, locally.

All past students are eligible to vote and be elected.

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Kaieteur News

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Tuesday February 05, 2013

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Underprivileged youths targeted for employment training Aimed at securing employment for underprivileged youths, Youth Challenge Guyana (YCG) yesterday engaged a strategic initiative at the Ministry of Education’s Kingston, Georgetown, National Centre for Education Resource Development (NCERD).

With funding from the British High Commission, the programme, which is designed to train some 30 youths between the ages of 17 and 25, will continue for a three-week period providing them with skills in customer relations.

According to YCG Executive Director, Dmitri Nicholson, since the initiative being dubbed ‘Safe Streets’ is intended to make the streets safer it has specifically targeted school drop-outs, teenage mothers and other vulnerable youths from depressed communities including Tiger Bay, River View, West Ruimveldt and Albouystown.

Nicholson explained yesterday, “We are working with those youths who currently have no qualifications to get a job.

The way we selected them was on a basis of circumstances that we think

are likely to leave them at risk of becoming involved in illegal or other types of activities that are not productive in the society,” he added.

Youths in the targeted communities were selected following an assessment which saw YCG officials visiting communities and meeting with community leaders and ascertaining the circumstances facing youths in the communities.

This undertaking, according to Nicholson, revealed that there were many young people who did not have the opportunity to become employed since they were never exposed to training towards employment.

“The training that we are providing offers them the opportunity to become skilled in customer service and event support so that they may be able to find jobs with some of the local customer related industries,” assured Nicolson.

Coordinator of the training programme, Dwayne Mitchell, said that as part of the initiative efforts were made to solicit the support of event promoters the likes of Hits and Jams (HJ) Entertainment.

At the opening of the training programme

yesterday a representative from HJ, Rawle Ferguson, was in attendance. He encouraged the participating youths to take advantage of the training at their disposal even as he pledged support to their training.

According to Mitchell, talks are also ongoing to gain the support of mega-football promoter Kashif and Shanghai to join the noble effort. “The hope is that when the promoters have activities they will employ them (youths) to work as ushers and to collect tickets...They will basically be support staff to these promoters,” Mitchell related.

Although the acquired skills are not likely to see them employed on a full-time basis, Mitchell is convinced that it could in some way help to improve their standard of living since “they will work and get paid.”

Moreover, he said that efforts will be made to get as many event planners as possible on board.

It is the belief of the YCG officials that employment could become a reality during the course of next month which could be fruitful given the fact that there is basically an activity every weekend in which the youths could be

The opening of the training programme yesterday.

meaningfully engaged.

Even as training takes shape, YCG officials have already resumed discussions with the British High Commission to support the continuance of the initiative perhaps; even on a larger scale.

“We might even come up with some brilliant idea to add

to this and we hope that they can support us with other initiatives,” said Mitchell.

YCG has in the past been able to offer small corporate type training. However, Nicholson disclosed yesterday that there are not many entities that are willing to pay for such activities.

“That becomes a difficulty because we cannot sustain these programmes without financial support.”

Accordingly, YCG is appealing to the business sector for support to ensure that programmes such as ‘Safe Streets’ could remain sustainable.

Page 30

The children’s Mashramani programme is in the final stage of the regional competitions being held this week, according to coordinator of children’s activities for Mashramani 2013, Ms. Desiree WylesOgle.

These activities will be held in the Georgetown Education District, the Region Four Education District, the Region Six Education District, and Region Nine Education District.

She explained that on February 13, next, there will be the masquerade dancing; the following day there will be calypso and dramatic poetry.

On February 15, there will be a sing-off by the regional choirs and preliminary for the steelband competition, and on February 16, there will be the GT&T children’s costume parade.

Jermaine’s Enterprise contributed 1,500 biodegradable boxes for the Children’s Parade, Ms. Wyles-Ogle said GBTI also made a significant contribution by sponsoring all the trophies for the dramatic poetry event throughout the regions, a

Kaieteur News

total of 114 trophies.

Ms. Wyles-Ogle also said that the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport will be hosting a Republic of Guyana essay writing competition in both the junior and senior (18 and above) category, under the theme “The role of youths in nation building.”

Essays for the junior category have to be at least 450 words, while those for the senior category must be at least 600 words. All entries must be accompanied by an entry form, to be published, and must be submitted to the Mashramani Secretariat by February 15. Forms can also be picked up at the secretariat.

Convener of the Child Art competition, Ms. Collette Jones-Chin, said that this year’s competition is based on the Mashramani 2013 theme: “Reflecting creativity, embracing diversity”, with the sub-theme being “Rainbow of hope”, in light of the celebration of both the 175th anniversary of Indian Arrival and 250th Anniversary of the Berbice Slave Rebellion.

The age category for the

One of the many performances yesterday

Tuesday February 05, 2013

art competition ranges between four and12, and this will see students competing in drawing and painting, while those in the 13-17 category will compete in drawing, painting, and the new addition -graphics and tattoo body art designs.

Competitions will be held at the Umana Yana from February 14 to February 28, and letters have already been dispatched to schools in the various regions.

According to Ms. JonesChin, when the children are finished doing their pieces, they will submit them to their respective schools. The schools will then send the three best pieces to the NCC. Judges have already been selected, and the prizes to be awarded are very attractive.

Coordinator of the Steel Band competition, Mr. Andrew Tyndall, indicated that this competition will be held in the school band, church band, small categories; senior and junior solo, band duet and large band categories; and competition will be held for all the categories, except the school band category, on February 17 at the Cliff Anderson Sports Hall

at 4.00pm (16:00hrs).

An increase in the number of school bands participating in this competition is expected, and in order to facilitate the attendance of more students at the competition, a separate competition will be held for this category on February 15 at NCC. He informed that the permanent corporate sponsor for this event is the Republic Bank (Guyana) Limited.

Also, Mash Steel Band concerts will be held predominantly in the rural areas, such as Linden, Parika, Region 6 (East Berbice/ Corentyne), but one will be held in Georgetown.

At the National Cultural Centre yesterday coordinator of the children’s Mashramani competition and District Education Officer of Primary Schools Georgetown, Emanuel Bridgewater said the five days of activities planned, commenced yesterday with calypso and dramatic poetry.

Adding that a total of 98 schools are participating, he said parents and interested parties can turn out and give the children support at various events.

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Kaieteur News

Pomeroon boat captain on $600,000 bail for manslaughter Supported by his wife and other i m m e d i a t e relatives, Hytilall Ramdahin, 58, of Anna Canal, Upper Pomeroon R i v e r, w a s y e s t e r d a y granted $600.000 bail by Magistrate Sunil Scarce.

Ramdahin appeared at the Charity Magistrate’s Court charged with one count of manslaughter stemming from the loss of six lives after a boat collision on December 18, last.

Three of the six persons were adults. The charge was indictable thus Magistrate Scarce cautioned Ramdahin not to enter a plea. The 58year-old stood in the dock and listened carefully to the charge of manslaughter which was read to him.

According to a police report, the Region Two boat, piloted by Ramdahin, was said to be transporting 12 persons, including members attached to the One Laptop Per Family Programme and the Region Two Chairman, Parmanand Persaud and his wife to Charity from Siriki, in the Upper Pomeroon.

Another boat that was transporting seven persons, six of whom perished, was proceeding in the opposite direction when the collision occurred.

Police prosecutor, Christendat Ramana, strongly objected to bail. He said that the evidence uncovered by both the police and the Maritime Administration Department (MARAD) was strong and that if bail is granted, there exists a likelihood that Ramdahin may not comply with the conditions.

Ramana also zeroed in on the sensitive nature of the crime noting that three of the six persons who died were children.

Counsel, Latchman Dindyal, in his application for bail, reminded the court that the offence was bailable.

Dindyal informed the court that his client is 58years-old and he was a licensed boat driver assigned to the Region Two Administration for the past 15 years.

Counsel argued too that

Ramdahin was not a flight risk and thus he will attend his trail. He cooperated with the police from the inception.

After listening to both arguments Magistrate Scarce granted bail with an additional requirement which stated that Ramdahin should report to t h e C h a r i t y station on Wednesdays and Saturdays.

On December 18, last; boat captain Harrynarine Bhagwandeen, 40; his cousin Vincent Singh,42; Zelda Rodriques, 50; her son Shawn Rodriques,15; Rajkumar, 14; and his little sister Amerita Singh, 10,died after the collision.

All of them died as a result of multiple injuries. The younger Rodrigues died due to blunt trauma and spinal injuries.

Rajkumar’s parents Beverly, and Albert Narine, who were late for court said that they were not pleased with the amount of bail granted to Ramdahin. They are contending that bail should have been more substantial.

Abusive lover lashes friend’s son, splits his head A woman and her 14-yearold son were yesterday morning viciously attacked by a man who later fled the scene, after he hit the boy in the face with a piece of wood.

The boy fell unconscious to the ground.

The man had reportedly attacked the boy with a four by four after he tried to prevent his assailant from assaulting his mother further.

The woman, Vanetta Ward, was bitten in the face by the man after he asked her for sex and she refused.

Her refusal evidently angered the man, who grabbed her and bit her.

“Now after I start holler me son come to rescue me and this man just pick up a plank and lash he in he face with it, and me son fall down and blackout. “(The man) come running behind me with the same plank, but I manage to get away from he, and run by me sister. Ward said that she had to have the injury sutured at the Linden Hospital Complex.

She received four stitches for her injury, while her son received eight. She later reported the incident to the Police.

Ward said that shortly before the attack she was preparing to go to the probation office to report t h e m a n ’s b e h a v i o u r.

Instead she had to go to

the Police station and the hospital.

Wa r d told this newspaper that she had shared a relationship with the man but decided to end it because she could not take the abuse anymore.

The woman, who lives with three of her four children at Block 22, said that the man is not her children’s father, and she had never lived with him, but they had shared a ‘visiting’ relationship, for five years.

During that period, she said that they had built a house together.

“But I couldn’t take it anymore because he always abusing me, so I decided to call it quits last year- but he ain’t teking lef.

He does want to come and demand sex from me anytime; he does rape me, because I don’t give in to he. One time he even come at the house, and right in front of the children, he vice me, and put his hand in my private parts.”

During another incident last year, Ward said that the man hit her with a shovel stick in her head, splitting it in the process.” This man is a beast.

I need a restraining order against him,” Ward declared emphatically.

The woman said that she had already lived through an abusive relationship with the father

of her children, and was thus forced to leave him, so she could not go through the same thing continuously.

“This thing (abuse) with this man, it telling on my children, because he always in the yard at nights they cannot sleep, because of fear, and they have to go to school, and then again because he help me to build the house he feel he could go there anytime and do me anything’, the distraught woman confessed.

Her sister Nicola, who called Kaieteur News said, “I’m totally fed up with this situation where my sister has to be living in fear of this man. He is constantly a b u s i n g h e r, a n d h e i s doing it in front of the children, and they are so traumatized.

“The thing is she is living in a very desolate area, so he could go and do her anything and nobody would be there.

But the good thing is, this same son that he attack, he does always be there to save her, if not I don’t know what would happen”.

B o t h Wa r d a n d h e r sister said that whenever the man abuses her (Ward), he is in the habit of going and hide out at a relative, or he disappears; he goes into the interior.

He is presently nowhere to be seen, they claimed.

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Jumbo Jet flies off with top honours at BLUTC Horserace meet Mr VIc Oudit and Colin Elock in all smiles as the collect the G class trophy for Traditional man's victory

Banks DIH Supervisor Mark Benjamin presents the winning trophy for Got to Go victory in the D class event to Mrs Rose Mohammed of the Jumbo Jet stable.

The 2013 horseracing got on the way on Sunday 3 February when the Bush Lot United Turf Club successfully held their season opening one day horserace meet at the club’s entity Sea View Park, Bush Lot, West Coast Berbice.

Amidst some last minute changes and adjustment to the programme the day was incident free with the Jumbo Jet Stable continuing from when their left off as they took the opportunity to claim top honours with three wins and a number of other placings in the eight events meet.

With the D class 1400M event being reclassified the feature race for the day, the Jumbo Jet stable wasted no time in romping away with the top two spots with Got to Go with champion jockey Junior Sookhan on the perch rd

going all the way home ahead of stablemate Home Bush Baby. The eight horse field saw Traditional Man of the Elcock stable in its second race for the day running well down the homestretch to occupy the third spot ahead of early front runner Renia Del Café.

The win was worth $540,000 compliments of Jumbo Jet for the Banks DIH Trophy presented by Banks DIH Outdoor Events Supervisor Mark Benjamin.

The Jumbo Jet stables were in winner’s row again in the Three year old 1200M event for Guyana and West Indies bred horses with Its My Turn piloted by Rad Drepaul taking away the $500, 000 top money compliments of Banks DIH Limited and the Dr Guy Lowe trophy ahead of Gold Rush, The Wild Grinder and

Flying baby.

Tradition Man of the Elcock stable and ridden by Rupert Ramnauth took care of business in the G class 1200M event with an impressive win and it dusted its opponents down the homestretch to race away with the $350,000 compliments of Eron Lall Construction and The Simple Royal Trophy. The other placings were occupied by Rosetta, Captain Crook and Miss Kiara.

She so Special of the Jumbo Jet stable ridden by Sookhan won the Three year old 1200M event for Guyana bred horses taking the $350,000 winners money and the Lakeram Sukhdeo and family trophy ahead of Silent Night and Dream Boy. Rad Drepaul rode Dream Boy of the Mohabir Stable to

victory as it copped the $200,000 first prize and the Phagoo General Store trophy in the’ I and lower 1200M event. Blessings, Mona Lisa and Mary Ann were the others that placed.

The race for horses classified J 1&2 over 1200M was Mary Ann with Richmond in charge ahead of Diplomat, Windy Killer and I want Revenge.

Pick Pocket of the Sampson stable again with Richmond was in winner’s row in the J3 1200M event ahead of Sugar Boy and Maga Line.

The Champ with Appadhu in the saddles won the K class 1200M event worth $120,000 compliments of Romel Jagroop and Lenny Singh from Wicked Revenge, Pleasant Surprise and Good Going.

The Jumbo Jet racing stable came big soaring away with all the individual awards copping the champion stable, champion trainer with Brian “Black Boy” Ramroop, champion

Lakeram Sukdeo of the BLUTC presents his family trophy to a representative of the Jumbo Jet stable for She So special victory in the Three year Guyana bred event. and runner up jockeys accolades with Jockey Junior Sookhan and Rad Drepaul taking away the top prizes compliments of the Trophy Stall, Bourda Market and the organisers.

Over 80 horses took part

in the day’s activity with some $8.5M in prizes and trophies up for grabs. The day’s activity was incident free with the police coming in for special commendation for doing an excellent job.

(Samuel Whyte)

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Kaieteur News

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Participating schools receive footballs from Nestle Milo Students of schools participating in the Milo U-20 Football Tournament pose with their footballs following the completion of the presentation ceremony.

preparations for this tournament and others.

Nestle Brand Manager Selwyn Bobb spoke on behalf of the institution, claiming that the presentation was a clear example of the Company’s obligation towards the development of sport.

“Our aim has always been to contribute to sports and this expression and display shows our continued commitment to youth sports and sports in totality”.

PETRA organization CoDirector Marlon Cole speaking at the occasion expressed satisfaction at the schools commitment towards the tournament, adding that the discipline and standard displayed so far was highly

commendable.

“We would like to thank the Ministry of Education for allowing the schools to compete in this initiative, the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport for helping us with the acquisition of a duty free letter and most importantly the sponsors, Nestle Caribbean by way of Beepats Trading for their unwavering support of this venture.

In partnership with the Ministry of Health, this tournament is a vehicle for the fight against Gender Violence as the teams certainly have played their part and we would like to believe that the little we have done has had a profound effect on the aforementioned cause,” Cole told the gathering.

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Kaieteur News

BOSAI upsets star studded ‘Team 25’ El Dorado ‘A’ and Hard Knocks ‘2’ also victorious BOASI upset Team ‘25’3 – 2 in extra time, El Dorado ‘A’ overpowered Kuru-Kuru Warriors 3 – 1 and Hard Knocks ‘2’ made light work of Classic Winners, brushing them aside 5 – 0 as the Unique Entertainment/ Banks Premium Beer Futsal Classic continued on Sunday last at the Mackenzie Sports Club Hard Court in Linden.

Team ‘25’ that featured the likes of former National forward Collie ‘the Hitman’ Hercules, Quacy Johnson, Ruel McKinnon and Keon Sears was the talk of the night since persons felt that they were one of the favourites to cart off the tournament’s $500,000 first prize.

Nonetheless, the little known side that is made up of employees from BOASI Mineral Inc. came into the contest with the exact aim as the rest of the competitors and being regarded as the underdogs, they played as if they had nothing to lose.

Once again the tournament attracted a massive crowd, probably the

largest of the competition so far which will begin their round of 16 this weekend.

Sears sent Team ‘25’ to an early lead but BOASI’s custodian Kellon McCalmon who was the star of the night, denied several shots which seemed destined to pierce the back of the nets from Hercules and Johnson.

Orin Scott was able to pull one back as the scores ended leveled on a goal each. Already in a frenzy from the first half action, persons rose to their feet to take in the second stanza of the game which proved to be more thrilling.

Andrew Phillips scored three minutes into the second half and Sears once again scored as Team ‘25’ leveled the scores at 2 – 2.

However, McCalmon heroics to deny mostly the vicious Hercules coupled with an own goal by Ruel Williams in the closing minutes of extra time, resulted in the team many had to win, being sent home instead.

It was if BOSAI had won

the final as their supporters engulfed the court in jubilation to acknowledge the team’s hard fought win.

Meanwhile, Clive DeNobrega netted a double while Seon ‘Parrot’ Brewley, Keon Cameron and Ronald Bristol scored a goal each for Hard Knocks ‘2’ who would now join their first unit team in the round of 16. Two goals from Dexter Garway and one from Jermaine McBean was enough to see El Dorado ‘A’ past KuruKuru Warriors.

Meanwhile, the tournament will continue on Wednesday as the final set of matches from the Round-of32 will be played.

In the opening game from 7:00 hours will see Young Spartans and Ambassadors going head-to-head, while El Dorado ‘B’ will attempt to emulate their first string team performance as they face Top ‘7’.

Block 22 is down to face Hot Skull FC and Top Class will play Avengers in the night’s final game.

Female boxers defeated but GBA President grateful for experience garnered Two female boxers, Theresa London and Akesa Arokium, returned home empty handed after they were defeated when they fought two Trinidadians in invitational bouts in the Trinidad and Tobago National Open Championships at the Woodbrook Youth Centre, Port of Spain, Trinidad, Sunday evening last.

The two pugilists were accompanied to the event by National Coach, Wensel Thomas and Secretary/ Treasurer of the GBA, Kesa Chase. Ms Chase said that London fought Trinidadian, Chimera Taylor while Arokium opposed another Trinidadian, Stephanie Allen. Both locals tipped the scales with less weight than their opponents; London weighed 75kgs to Taylor’s 80kgs while Arokium tipped the scales at 46kgs, two less than her opponent.

Meanwhile, President of the Guyana Boxing Association (GBA), Steve Ninvalle said that though both boxers lost he was not disheartened.

He said that Guyanese female boxers are starved of international competition and the aim of the exchange programmes is to provide such exposure. He said that his executives are only

now placing emphasis on the females and he is not that naïve to expect instantaneous results.

He said that when the Trinidadians extended the offer he was only too happy to field a team and he regards the two selectees as the best available.

Mr. Ninvalle said that he welcomes the exchange programmes and is optimistic that the females would benefit

from it to the extent that they will soon be able to dominate their Caribbean counterparts.

He said that GBA executives are examining the possibility of initiating similar exchange programmes with other Caribbean countries as they continue to hone the skills of local boxers in preparation for the 2016 Brazil Olympics.

Stewart shines in T&T Premier Division one cricket Guyanese Carmichael slams 38, takes 2-32 Navin Stewart slammed an unbeaten half century to guide Moosai Sports to a 4 wicket victory over Aranguez in the Trinidad and Tobago Cricket Board premier division one competition last Saturday.

Aranguez batted first after winning the toss and scored 188-9 off their allocation of 50 overs at Honeymoon Park.

Hakim Mitchell led with 43 and got support from

Jonathan Cabralis 39 and Guyanese Kellon Carmichael 38. Dillon Mangal grabbed 340 and Ken Hazel 2-16.

Carmichael removed William Perkins and Aniel Kanhai cheaply but Stewart with a top score of 70, Jeetendra Sookdeo 35 and Neil Williams 28 secured victory for Moosai Sports as they finished on 190-6 in reply. Carmichael took 2-32 from 10 overs for Aranguez.

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Kaieteur News

Tuesday February 05, 2013

FLYING ACE CYCLE CLUB ANNUAL AWARDS AND PRESENTATION CEREMONY...

Neil Reece and Marica Dick once again top riders The awardees pose with their accolades along with Coach Roberts at right after the presentation.

By Samuel Whyte Top cyclists Neil Reece and Marica Dick were adjudged top cyclists when the Flying Ace Cycle Club held their its 12thannual presentation and awards ceremony on Saturday 2nd February at the New Amsterdam Town Hall.

Reece, a final year student of the New Amsterdam Technical Institute, who last year moved up from the Junior ranks in which he held the title as junior champion on a few occasions and completed his first year as a senior campaigner with reasonable success.

Among his success was winning a tough race from Georgetown to the highway and back. Reece was presented with a number of accolades including cash incentives, trophies, medals and a hamper.

Multiple times national junior female champion Marica Dick, one of the top female riders in the country who is still at school, also had an outstanding year despite tapering her training and participation to cope with her studies. Dick a sixth form student of The New Amsterdam Multilateral Secondary School and presently studying for her Advance levels examinations was able to successfully combine her training and studies, being outstanding on both the road the track and in the classroom.

Her exploits include helping Guyana retained the cycling championship at the recently held Inter Guiana Games staged in Guyana and once again retaining championship honours at the National School Athletics and Cycling Championship held at the national stadium. During the year also she passed nine subjects at the SESEC examinations.

Others receiving awards were Andrew Hicks in the 12-14 categories. Audel Ross was adjudged the top Juvenile; Elijah Brijjader was the top junior.

Syborne Fernandes was the top Veteran on Show, while Crystal Lambert was the runner up female cyclists. Other cyclists recognised in the open category were Wasim Hasnoo, Rohan Persaud and Ray Millington; they all received trophies for their efforts. Club Secretary Margaret Kuma and club Coach Randolph Roberts were also recognized.

Among some of the top cyclists to emerge from the club are Wazin Gafoor the Benjamin brothers Gary and Wilbert, Peter Millington,

Russell Allen, Rudolph Blair and female rider Rhonda Persaud among many others.

Club Coach and founder Randolph Roberts gave an overview of the Club since its formation Some 26 years ago.

Today it is the only functioning cycle club in Berbice and one of the leading clubs in Guyana.

He also challenged the other cyclist to step up and challenge the two top riders.

Roberts also had special words of appreciation and thanks for A. Ally and Sons, Dharry Tulsi, Scotia Bank and Banks DIH Limited among others.

Feature remarks were delivered by Pastor Phillip Rose who congratulated the awardees and encouraged them to continue to seek excellence in their exploits. He also traced the history of the club, where it began from humble beginnings to being one of the top cycling clubs in Guyana today.

Pastor Rose had special words of appreciation for both Reece and Dick and urged them to continue doing the positive things in life and urged them to be positive role models for their peers. He also congratulated Coach Roberts for the splendid work he is doing and encouraged him to continue with his success story. He had words of encouragement and adoration for the other cyclists encouraging them to keep training, taking in their education and be disciplined. He used Walsh as a good example of a dedicated, honest and hard working and successful sportsman whom they could emulate.

Both Roberts and Pastor Rose mentioned of the days when the Regional Administration used to be in the forefront of promoting sports in the region and host awards ceremonies and called on the region to once again take up the practice. They also called on the government and business minded persons to come on board and assist the club in whatever way possible.

National junior athletic champion, Melissa Byass, was also honoured by the club for her sterling performance over the years. Roberts in remarks noted her determination and gritty, sometime lonely crusade in trying to maintain her championship status.

The club recently held its Annual General Meeting and is headed by Businessman John Lewis.

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Kaieteur News

AAG injunction issue must be placed in perspective - Boyce not interested in regaining Presidency The injunction filed against the new Athletic Association of Guyana (AAG) administration is not aimed at returning former President, Colin Boyce, who presided over the association over the last four years to the post, as some commentators may believe.

Boyce has told Kaieteur Sport, as recent as yesterday, that even if a fresh election were to be the result of the injunction that stated that the January 20 AGM and Election was unconstitutional; it was unlawful, illegal, ultra vires, null, void and of no effect, he will not be contesting the post of President.

Rather, Boyce stated that the aim of the injunction is to sort of quarantine the association, ensure that those clubs that have satisfied the AAG Constitution gets an opportunity to serve as opposed to the illegitimate clubs that popped up on election day.

“I feel it is my right as a past President to ensure that I represent the right people, and not allow those who are not in order to run the sport,” Boyce said briefly yesterday, adding that there is an unequivocal need to put this matter into perspective.

Another section of the print media, instead of focusing on the issues at hand, has sought to bring Boyce’s track record and character over the last four years into disrepute, but according to Boyce those who sincerely follow athletics would dismiss those criticisms.

On the subject of promoting and favouring police athletes, Boyce noted that Winston George had qualified for the London Olympic Games. George is a police athlete. Boyce said sending his Coach, who is the

Colin Boyce

Aubrey Hutson Police Coach, Lyndon Wilson to the Games was appropriate. He had done the same when he sent Julian Edmonds with his athlete, Stephon James to the CARIFTA Games and other Coaches with their athletes to other games, but no mention was made of those instances.

Boyce said that he will ignore those criticisms since they are baseless and questioned where those commentators were in the past 20 years.

Any serious commentator on athletics would be careful to point out the tenure under which they may want to attribute “maladministration”.

Boyce, a Deputy Superintendent of Police, is credited with piloting the

recovery of the sport from years of ineptitude.

However, Aubrey Hutson seemingly won the AAG Presidency on January 20 six votes to three, but three of those Clubs, who were allowed to vote were unconstitutional. With those clubs not allowed to be part of the voting process, the Presidency would have been a dead-heat, tied three apiece.

According to the AAG Constitution, a club must consist of 10 active athletes; must participate in 80% of the AAG competitions and must not be indebted to the association among two others that bear no real relevance to the subject of the injunction.

Based on that constitutional criterion, BedfordAllstars, Rising Stars and Royal Youth Movement should not have been allowed to vote. They all failed that criterion, but were allowed to vote and all voted in favour of Hutson at the AAG AGM and Elections.

Kaieteur Sport was present at the 2013 elections and during the voting process, Boyce reportedly sought to bring the illegitimacy of those clubs to the attention of the Returning Officer, Dr. Karen Pilgrim, but an intervention came from General Secretary, Claude Blackmore, who said that Boyce had previous occasions to deal with that issue.

Blackmore, as General Secretary, would have been privy to all the machinations of Clubs before the elections.

Additionally, this newspaper has also learnt that Hutson is expected to engage Boyce on what are the possibilities of a resolution that could put a swift end to the matter. Hutson publicly stated his intentions are to reinforce the positive programmes Boyce initiated.

Fruta Conquerors/Namilco One Love Football Classic tourney...

GDF and Police march off with honours Marlon Benjamin netted a hat-trick in the 33rd, 35th and 90th minutes and was supported

by Clifford Garraway (47th) and Quincy Craig (91st) to lead the Guyana Defence Force to a 5-1 victory over Seawall FC when the curtains went up on the Fruta Conquerors/Namilco One Love Football Classic tournament at the Tucville Ground Sunday evening last. Omali Nassy netted in the 41st minute for Seawall in what was really an inconsequential feat.

The night’s opener saw Police emerging victorious over Seawall 5-4 on penalty kicks, this after both teams failed to breach their opponents’ goal during regulation and then extra time.

The action continues at the same venue on Friday February 8 next with two highly anticipated games. At 18:30hrs, Buxton United FC takes on Western Tigers while Fruta

Conquerors will tackle beacons. The Buxton United/Western Tigers match should provide some excitement especially since the latter team would still be bristling after being booted out of the 2012 edition of the K&S Football extravaganza complements of a Michael Phyll stinger delivered from way past the halfway line.

The ‘Tigers’ are expected to come out snarling and bearing their claws as they attempt to avenge that loss. A more detailed analysis will appear in a later edition of this publication.

Fifteen teams will be vying for top honours in an elimination format over 8 competitive playing days. The grand final and the 3rd place playoff are scheduled for one day after Mashramani day. All matches will be played at the Tucville Ground.

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Kaieteur News

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Woodpecker Products launches Stonehill cricket equipment brand National cricketers Derwin Christian (left), Trevon Griffith and Christopher Barnwell display some of the Stonehill cricket equipment at Woodpecker Products yesterday.

T

he popular brand of Stonehill cricket equipment is now available in Guyana.

Stonehill Sports is a family owned business in Pakistan, with their Caribbean Head office in Trinidad and Tobago. Woodpecker Products which is located in Alberttown is proud to be named the exclusive dealer for Stonehill Sports equipment locally.

Besides cricket gears of the highest quality, Stonehill can also supply uniforms to order for various Sports. In the recently concluded Caribbean Twenty\20 tournament the outstanding new uniforms for the Guyana team were manufactured

by Stonehill, who has also sponsored eight players from the national cricket team.

Meanwhile, in an invited comment after the launching of the Stonehill equipment yesterday at Woodpecker Products, national cricketer Christopher Barnwell who landed himself a contract with the Royal Challengers Bangalore in the Indian Premier League said it’s a wonderful opportunity.

“It’s good to play alongside the big names in the IPL, my main objective is to help the team win the tournament. I am also looking forward to the regional 50 over and 4 day competitions. I want to score heavily and take as many wickets and hopefully get back into the West Indies team”, added Barnwell.

Also present at the launching were national cricketers Trevon Griffith and Derwin Christian.

Tuesday February 05, 2013

Kaieteur News

Steyn takes 11 in crushing victory Like day turns to night, Dale Steyn broke the back of Pakistan’s resistance with careerbest match figures at the Wanderers as South Africa wrapped up a commanding 211-run victory and in the process AB de Villiers equalled the world record for dismissals by a wicketkeeper. Steyn, inevitably, produced another classy spell with the second new ball, and proceeded to bowl the rest of the morning, to end with 11 for 60 in the Test.

Misbah-ul-Haq and Asad Shafiq carried their fifth-wicket stand to 127 but after that there was not much more defiance from Pakistan’s lower order. Steyn bowled a 10.4over spell, a herculean effort for a strike bowler, and his match figures placed him fifth on the list of cheapest 11-wicket hauls in Test cricket, the best since Sir Richard Hadlee in 1976.

Behind the stumps, de Villiers also had a morning to remember as he equalled Jack Russell’s world record of dismissals in a Test match which had also come on this ground back in 1995. He also became the first wicketkeeper to take 10 catches and score a hundred in a Test. The dual role is starting to rest more easily on his shoulders, although his bowlers are helping by not keeping him in the field for too long.

Resuming on 183 for 4, Misbah and Shafiq had five overs to face with the old ball which offered a few scoring opportunities but they always knew the threat that was looming

around the corner. It took Steyn into just his second over before he found Shafiq’s edge as the batsman glanced the ball to second slip off an open face where Jacques Kallis took a low chance.

As the best strike bowlers do, Steyn continued to pick up the big wickets and in his next over produced another lovely outswinger which grazed Misbah’s edge to end a stubborn innings from which teammates should heed plenty of lessons.

Steyn’s partner-in-crime, Vernon Philander, then nipped in with his second when Sarfraz Ahmed dragged a ball into his stumps when trying to withdraw the bat. Umar Gul and Saeed Ajmal resisted briefly before Morne Morkel produced a rearing short delivery which took Ajmal’s glove. Morkel’s front foot was again very close to the front line and he was soon denied another scalp by overstepping when Junaid Khan was bowled swinging to leg.

Steyn’s long spell, a credit to his stamina and heart, brought his tenth wicket when Gul top-edged a leg-side slog, which also provided de Villiers with his record-equalling catch, although it needed the DRS to overturn the original decision. A new world record, though, just eluded him as the final wicket belonged solely to Steyn when he trapped Junaid lbw.

It completed another clinical display from South Africa, after an opening day when they

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Dale Steyn's 11th wicket ended the Test (AFP)

had been put under some pressure by Pakistan’s bowlers. Again it was the home side’s own attack that has created daylight between them and the opposition. Pakistan bridged the gap a little second time around, but will be hoping for more placid conditions

when they reach Newlands.

Scores: South Africa 253 (Kallis 50, Hafeez 4-16) and 275 for 3 dec (de Villiers 103*, Amla 75*, Smith 52) beat Pakistan 49 (Steyn 6-8) and 268 (Misbah 64, Shafiq 56, Steyn 5-52) by 211 runs.

t r o Sp

Ravens win emotional Super Bowl against 49ers N

EW ORLEANS (Reuters) - The Baltimore R a v e n s reclaimed the greatest prize in North American sports after a dramatic, nail-biting 34-31 Super Bowl victory over the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday.

Inspired by their powerpacked quarterback Joe Flacco, the Ravens survived a ferocious comeback from the 49ers and a bizarre power outage that stopped the game for more than half an hour to win their second Super Bowl.

John Harbaugh, the head coach of the Ravens, won the most anticipated sibling rivalry in American team sports against his younger brother Jim, who holds the equivalent job with the 49ers. And Ray Lewis, the combative 37-year-old Ravens linebacker destined for the Hall of Fame, ended his 17 season career with a

Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco (C) raises the Vince Lombardi Trophy as he celebrates victory over the San Francisco 49ers in their NFL Super Bowl XLVII football game in New Orleans, Louisiana, February 3, 2013. REUTERS/Jim Young

completely different complexion.

With Colin Kaepernick finally finding his targets and making inroads with the football in hand, San Francisco piled on 17 unanswered points.

When Kaepernick rushed for a touchdown himself with just 10 minutes to go in the final quarter, the margin was down to just two points and momentum was on their side. But Justin Tucker kicked a 38-yard field goal to give his team a five-point lead and the 49ers failed to score the touchdown they needed to win, getting only a two-point safety, as the Ravens defended their line for dear life.

“Five yards short, all the work we did in the offseason, the whole entire season, everything came down to five yards and we weren’t able to get it done,” said dejected 49ers tackle Joe Staley.

Both team played down the impact of the power outage, saying it was the same for both teams, while the Harbaugh brothers embraced each other as confetti rained down from the roof after one of the most emotional nights in American sport.

“I just love him obviously. I think anybody out there who has a brother can understand what that is all about,” John said.

“The meeting with Jim in the middle was probably the most difficult thing I have ever been associated with in my life. I am proud of him.”

most poignant moments ever when Beyonce came out to witnessed in the 47 editions perform a stunning halftime of the Super Bowl when a show then opened the second choir from Sandy Hook half with a Super BowlElementary School joined record 108-yard kickoff Jennifer Hudson in a stirring return for a touchdown from rendition of “America the Jones that will be shown on highlight reels for Beautiful”.

The 70,000 spectators generations to come.

BLACK OUT rose to their feet, many with But just when it seemed tears in their eyes, as the children sang, nearly two the result was a foregone months after the deadly conclusion, a section of the shooting rampage at their lights at the Superdome, hosting the Super Bowl for Connecticut school. “ O u r w i s h i s t o the first time since Hurricane demonstrate to America and Katrina devastated the city in the world that, “We are 2005, blacked out.

Play was stopped for 35 Sandy Hook and we choose love,” the school said in a minutes while red-faced statement. The action on the officials and technicians field was as wild as the restored power. When it parties that have taken place came back on, the game in Bourbon St in the days i n s t a n t l y t o o k o n a leading up to the game as the Ravens opened up a commanding lead.

With Flacco, who was n a m e d M o s t Va l u a b l e Player, calling the shots and wide receiver Jacoby Jones scoring two of the most spectacular touchdowns seen in a Super Bowl, the Ravens looked to be cruising to victory when they led 28-6 early in the third quarter.

Flacco made a great start, orchestrating a six-play, 51yard drive on his team’s first possession that culminated with a 13-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Anquan Boldin.

In the second quarter, he threw a one-yard scoring pass to tight end Dennis Pitta, then a spectacular 56Beyonce gave a sizzling halftime yard scoring strike to Jones. performance at Super Bowl XLVII. The Ravens led 21-6 Printed and published by National Media & Publishing Company Limited, 24 Saffon St.Charlestown, Georgetown.Tel: 225-8465, 225-8491 or Fax: 225-8473/ 226-8210 second Super Bowl title, 12 years after he won his first.“What better way to go out?” said Lewis. “We did it!

We did it!”

The game, at the Superdome in New Orleans, was preceded by one of the