A TRULY prosperous and healthful New Year to you, Mr. Editor, your staff, our beloved country, and our citizens. I ask the Minister of Housing and Water, the Hon Irfaan Ali to move to the highest courts of the land and file a truly serious action for damages against the writer, the editor and publisher of Kaieteur News. 
These people are like ‘joy killers’, having little or nothing to do, loving to harass Ministers of the Government and belittle them. These people have such venom in their mentalities, characters and personalities. The amazing thing is that the publisher, Glenn Lall, calls for freedom of the press and openness, but will he publish this letter. 
If one builds a home, or gets a new car or achieves something, one needs to enjoy it and feel a sense of achievement. 
No one has a right to deny them that regardless of what media they own or are usually drunk with power and even alcohol over-indulgence. 
Because one is a politician or minister, they have no such right? For example, the headline of the (KN, January 1st) article and photograph were so distasteful, that it is obvious the aim was to malign, embarrass and bring ill-repute to Minister Ali. The aim had to be to cause damage and discomfort to the mentality of the minister. The powerful opposition does not bother with such things because they know better than Glenn Lall and confederates. When they get in power, it may be the same.
So the minister upgraded his house. What is the big deal about it? What major difference because he painted it, and he fixed his fence, and extended his house, making it somewhat more modern. I would like to ask Glenn Lall and Adam Harris, what is the crime? He worked for all the years before becoming a minister. 
How can one compare a person’s personal construction to a tendered construction? It is quite different. One pays personal attention and cut corners when doing a personal construction. To the seeming idiots of Kaieteur News, the system of tendering is set by Parliament with that of the loaner agencies, the IDB, the World Bank and IMF. There is a criteria set. It works for and against the Government at times but that, it seems, is what is best available.
They do not just open a tender and give it to anyone. The bid is usually given to the lowest bidder. I think that is a wrong system as many without the knowledge will tender and win contracts having fulfilled the criteria. This process needs to be revisited. I give in to that.
One has to ‘think and do so well.” 
If a Government, any Government were to negotiate and then give out contracts based on negotiations, there would be a hue and cry, and one has to accept that the possibilities of connivance and corruption is possible. 
Only when one does drug dealing, smuggling and back-tracking or is involved in visa corruption they do not need mortgages and/or loans. These people need to know why Glenn Lall’s visa to the US was revoked?
Why was his SC appointment with the Police revoked? He, as he demands others do, need to come clean: Was he a smuggler of goods? Was he a smuggler of persons to the USA? He needs to tell the people and come clean. “Speak the truth Glenn Lall and the truth shall make you free.”
Why do I sometimes defend Government officers? It is because they have a right to privacy as well. They do not make money like business people do, yet they strive to serve their country and their people. They are always maligned and attacked. Like any human being they can err also. We all err at times in our professional and personal lives.
But in this case after working for many years, the gentleman, a minister, builds a house, quite a simple one I would say, refurbishing it, and today most who can make the sacrifice and build a pool at the same time of constructing, they do.
I did, and a former CEO of GWI was so annoyed with jealousy that he tried to destroy me. I cannot help but be annoyed with Kaieteur News for always trying to embarrass people with their one -sided inquiries. For the same reason I have them in court. Their unprofessionalism and, as journalistic amateurs, they seem not to know when to stop or have a limit. 
We saw recently how a so-called journalist, more  comic than journalist, attacked and embarrassed Kwame McCoy because he was jealous McCoy was building a nice house, and the attacker/lower level journalist believed that McCoy has no such right to do so, as if McCoy was working for tamarind seeds since he was employed as a virtual youth at GBC.
Are they bereft of intelligence to know that there is something called mortgages/loans. Bitterness, jealousies and failures are terrible seeds to plant in one’s heart.
I would write these same kinds of defences for any minister in any Government. No one has a right to deny the joy people should have when they build or reconstruct or achieve something good, minister or no minister. 
Mr. Minister, I understand how you feel, and it is unfair to you. Please take appropriate actions. I even believe you have the legal option of suing, in a private criminal action against the people who make such baseless accusations. It has to be criminal to try and destroy one’s integrity.