I READ with disgust the Kaieteur News article on January 1, 2014 reporting on APNU’s ‘bark dog’, Joseph Harmon, and GPSU President Patrick Yarde attacking senior public servants Mr Clyde Roopchand and Mr Clement Sealey and former ministers and functionaries in the Ministry of Local Government Mr Clinton Collymore and Mr Harriperaud Nokta.

I am aware of the yeoman service of Collymore and Nokta in Parliament, Local Government and Hinterland Development. Nokta is particularly remembered as someone who is held in high regard by many Guyanese, and even some in the PNC, for his intimate knowledge of Guyana’s interior and work among the Amerindians.
What I am more familiar with is the years of dedicated service to our country by senior public servants Clyde Roopchand and Clement Sealey, who have, and still do today, continued to make major contributions to the development of our country by lending their considerable experience and expertise to the Ministry of Finance and Guyana Revenue Authority.
These gentlemen have made their mark by helping to move our country forward, and have been truly professional public servants throughout the PNC and the PPP governments, to the point where some have even accused them of having political affiliations when they were only carrying out their professional duties.
It was therefore distasteful to see, only a few hours after APNU Leader, David Granger, in his New Year Message spoke about 2014 being the ‘Year for Workers’, and his wish that in 2014, “…we all work together towards providing a good life for all Guyanese,” an article heaping scorn on two senior public servants.
Isn’t it ironic that Mr Granger gives a magnanimous speech on championing workers’ rights, but his ‘puppet’, Patrick Yarde, and ‘bark dog’, Joe Harmon, make utterances to the contrary?
Yarde and Harmon cannot even stand in the same intellectual and professional space as Messrs Roopchand and Sealey, much less be compared with them.
There is an old saying that says, ‘Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’. Perhaps closer attention needs to be paid to Yarde and Harmon and the role they have played in Guyana’s history and development. It would indeed be revealing and make for interesting reading, I am sure.

COLLIS SMITH