Dear Editor
Thursday last, I had the unfortunate experience of listening to snippets from a section of a telephone interview carried live on a FM 99.1 Kaieteur Radio, unmistakably in its opposition views. As would be expected, it was purely political, for such has definitely been proven to be the reason for such a radio station, with the not unexpected fact that it mirrors a most biased and prejudiced service, making it a major mouthpiece of the PPP/C. In this instance, it is not dissimilar to the pro-opposition print journal segment.

That section of the conversation had to do with a caller seeking to politicise the current pandemic.
Honestly editor, one has to be charitable in describing the absolute garbage that he sought to express. It was, in all content, both obscene and asinine for the unmitigated nonsense that was being spewed to support the clownish reasons – if that word can be used to describe such bilge.

Of course, it is tax payers’ money that is being used to refurbish the Ocean View Hotel into the first specialised health facility in the Caribbean to cater to patients of epidemics, as an appropriate institution for persons falling prey to the COVID-19 virus. Of course, it is a process that will cost a significant sum, given what is intended, in terms of its medical functions.

Editor, I stand to be corrected that the caller, who apparently believed that the sum is too great, since he referred to the future burden being left on our children, and did mention a billion-dollar price tag to be borne by them.

What a tragic man! Tragic, because his views, which were really meant as an attack against the coalition government, was nothing but arrant racism, pure and simple.

His views were shamelessly convenient, for he cannot claim not to know that it is always the tax payers, of all categories, who should be paying their fair share of taxes, who are saddled with repaying those sums expended on projects, which are especially for the benefit of the citizens and the nation in general. In fact, once this project is completed, and can benefit the public, it is about money well spent; an investment worth its dollar.

But whoever that caller was, needs to be reminded that the reported US$200M spent on the much touted, Bharat Jagdeo Skeldon Estate Project that must rank as the grandest of PPP/C development failures, since it failed to deliver, is a tax burden on the nation’s tax payers. And so would be the $US15M Amaila Falls road project, incomplete and abandoned, that had been given to a PPP/C crony Fip Motilall.

And these examples would be apart from the multi-billions in tax payer’s money, criminally stolen by the venal PPP/C governance of this country. The question, here again, is – who have been re-paying those sums stolen for self-enrichment; the coalition government that has just announced the state acquisition of the Ocean View for the preparation of a specialist centre for treating mass casualty victims.

There can be no question that such an institution is a dire necessity, as the sudden visit of the pandemic has shown US ALL. Further, no amount of money should be spared in preparations for such a service to the NATION, INCLUDING THAT SADLY MISPLACED CALLER/HIS FAMILY should the need arise FOR HIM.

And since the Covid-19 pandemic has exposed the gross deficiencies in even the health systems in many of the world’s most powerful states, it becomes imperative that developing nations such as Guyana, learn from such examples, and begin to plan a national health system that may have to cope with future pandemics, as predicted by the international scientific experts. God forbid that they are proven wrong!

For any citizen to seek to politicize the state’s efforts in combatting the current deadly challenge of the Covid-19 killer virus is unconscionable; moreover, when it is done under the unmistakable guise of race, in terms of a criticism which was surely sterile, except for its vile intention to poison minds, it speaks of a category of citizen who is hopelessly lost in a well-known mindset which will continue to lead him into further ignorance.

Regards
CarlaMendonca