IT is true that when someone does something that saves one’s life or something that is equally important, the beneficiary would normally be very grateful to that person for life and would even seek to repay him with at least one good deed.

Such persons would sometimes even change their whole outlook of life in their bid to repay not only the doer, but also the society as a whole. The world is not short of such examples.  On the other hand, there are those that no matter what you do or did or how many times you saved their lives, they would remain ungrateful until they draw their last breath. Fortunately, this group is a small minority.
There is at least one representative of this small minority  who got what we in Guyana normally call a heart attack deep in the interior of our country and his life was  saved only because there is an airstrip nearby from which he was airlifted to the Ogle Airport and then rushed to the Caribbean Heart Institute in Georgetown. I am talking about Mr. Nigel Hughes, Chairman of the AFC.  My question is, has Mr. Hughes reflected upon what could have been his faith if there was no nearby Airstrip or the Caribbean Heart Institute?
How can Mr. Hughes and the AFC vote to cut the entire capital expenditure from the Ministry of Public Works and Communications and allocations for the construction of a specialty hospital be understood and  described other than ungrateful acts? The fact that the life of Mr. Hughes, Chairman of the AFC was saved simply because there is a hinterland airstrip constructed and maintained by the PPP/C Government is reason enough for the AFC to forcefully support the Public Works Ministry’s allocations for the maintenance and construction of new airstrips in Guyana’s vast hinterland area.  The cutting of funding for the maintenance of existing airstrips and construction of new airstrips in the interior  and payments for work done on the modernisation of the Ogle Airport, are therefore nothing less than ungrateful acts by the AFC.
Another significant achievement of the PPP/C government is the establishment of the Caribbean Heart Institute, the place where Mr. Hughes was rushed to and where he received medical attention second to none in the Caribbean. Yet Hughes and the AFC voted to deny funds for the construction of a Specialty Hospital in Guyana, a facility that would boost the quality of health care available to the citizens of Guyana, especially the ordinary.
Mr. Hughes will certainly be travelling overseas, if he is not there already, to access further specialised medical attention;the type of medical attention that any ordinary Guyanese would be able to access if  the construction of a specialty hospital here in Guyana should become a reality. The AFC has at best just delayed or worst, denied ordinary Guyanese that reality by eliminating it from the 2013 budget.  He can afford it, no doubt about that, but what about the over 95 percent of Guyanese who cannot afford it? The message of the AFC, to ordinary Guyanese is therefore, “if you cannot afford to travel overseas to access specialised medical attention for curable illness, just stay here and die”.
There is a true story that is part of Guyana’s recent history that Mr. Hughes seems to have conveniently forgotten;it goes like this:
Once upon a time there was a maximum leader by the name of Mr. L.F.S. Burnham; he never paid any attention to the medical facilities in Guyana because he and his comrades could just jump on a plane to which- ever country they chose for their medical attention. However, one day he suddenly got ill and could not be flown out in time, was too ill to travel or the plane was late, I don’t know, but as a result, he ended up in the same hospital to which he never paid any attention in a desperate attempt to save his life. As faith would have it, as powerful as he was, it was there among the scores of suffering ordinary Guyanese that he drew his last breath. What a telling, true story, that not only Mr. Hughes, but all of the opposition MPs should be reminded of.