– Prime Minister Nagamootoo urges SVN graduates

PRIME Minister Moses Nagamootoo has urged graduating students of the Saraswati Vidya Niketan (SVN) Secondary School to continue aiming for excellence.

Prime Minister Nagamootoo, who is performing the duties of President, issued the charge on Sunday at the school’s 14th graduation exercise.

“This school has imparted to you the important and necessary foundations of learning. You must now yearn to reach the pinnacle of your education. You must, as I wrote over 45 years ago in a poem to my first child at her birth, ‘lasso a star and take a ride in the sky’,” the prime minister told the graduating class.

Motivating them further with the words of Martin Luther King, he urged the students to “keep moving” and to make full use of the world of opportunities which now awaits them.

“Go forward and be counted. Be a somebody; not just any body. Aim to achieve distinction. As Guyanese, prepare yourselves for these opportunities in our new economy, mainly in the petroleum and green growth sectors. I ask you to aim at becoming our future engineers, environmentalists, agronomists and agro-processors, project planners and other technicians. The vision of our Green State Development Strategy includes you, the leaders and creators of the new Guyana,” he said.

The prime minister, in congratulating the students on his own behalf and on behalf of President Granger for completing an important chapter in their lives, also praised their parents and teachers for their hard work.

“The personification of both teachers and parents, of course, is Swami Aksharananda, your esteemed Guruji who, as principal of Saraswati Vidya Niketan Hindu School, has guided you towards achievement of outstanding results. Thank you Swamiji for your leadership,” he said
He added: “To the SVN graduates, I share the elevation of your soul in pride, and I sincerely congratulate you, personally on our own behalf, and on behalf of the Government of Guyana and His Excellency, President David Granger. The President has himself attended both the 11th and 12th graduation ceremonies and, had he been in Guyana, I am sure that when the roll-call was taken, he would have gladly answered, ‘present, Sir!’ I want to endorse and share what His Excellency had said in 2016: ‘The values of education are concerned with producing persons of quality. Education must edify the mind, enhance skills and emancipate the mind from arrogance, from anger and from hatred. Education can achieve these ends only if it embraces certain values… Education instills respect for others, respect for authority… respect for the property of others’.”