Dear Editor,
I COULD not help but notice that Stabroek News is pushing a narrative that the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Dr. Vincent Adams, is a non-political public servant who was removed unfairly following the change of government. With so much evidence to the contrary available in the public domain, the newspaper has taken on an almost impossible task that will only damage its credibility in the long run.

The first thing I would like to point out is that Dr. Adams is part of the leadership of the Alliance For Change (AFC) party which is one of the major parties of the Coalition. He was also part of a five-man AFC team that renegotiated the Cummingsburg Accord with APNU in the run-up to the March 2020 elections. While being the head of EPA, Dr. Adams spoke at several APNU+AFC campaign events and appeared on Coalition TV programmes. He was very critical of the PPP/C and its 2020 Manifesto. How then could he be considered a non-political professional as Stabroek News wants us to believe? Given his disposition as outlined above; whose interest will Dr. Adams serve? The government of the day whose plans as outlined in its manifesto he opposed or the party he leads which is opposed to those plans? A good example would be his silence on flaring while the APNU+AFC was in office as against his very vocal public opposition to it when the PPP/C returned to office. He took no action or uttered not even a sound even though he was empowered by the law to do so when the Coalition was in government but became very vocal after. It is anyone’s guess why.

Secondly, Stabroek News’ attempt also to cloak Dr. Adams with sainthood flies in the face of reports of breaches of established procurement and financial procedures of the EPA during his tenure. In excess of US$47,000 of the entity’s money was used to pay for private medical expenses for an official of the entity.
It is clear that by his own actions that Dr. Adams is not quite the “consummate professional” Stabroek News is projecting him to be.

Yours sincerely,
Thomas Cole