Dear Editor,
OUR people were starved of opportunities during the period 2015 to 2020. The APNU+AFC officials hoarded the opportunities for themselves simply because they do not care about the people as they claim. I make reference to the Opposition MPs who received millions in scholarship awards to complete their bachelor’s degrees and even masters and PHDs at top universities in the UK and USA. While they were benefitting from advancements in their academics, the ordinary Guyanese people were left to suffer. However, following the PPP/C’s victory in the 2020 elections, we saw a different approach with regard to public service development than that which we experienced under the Coalition. I write to you on this matter.

I want to mention first and foremost that the current administration ought to be commended for all that they have done in the past year. They have focused on the people rather than themselves and I believe that is what sets them apart from the opposition. I bring attention to the GOAL programme which was rolled out earlier this year. We saw the government deliver on its promise of providing thousands of scholarships to Guyanese. Just recently, the government published the names of 6,000 scholarship awardees. This shows that the government is actively trying to provide Guyanese with opportunities to develop themselves and I think that deserves all the adulation possible.

A simple inspection of the list of scholarship awardees would also show that the scholarships were distributed evenly between the two major ethnic groups. I was able to decipher that just by examining the names on the list published and I am sure the actual percentages are close to what I estimated. The government should be commended for this because it shows that they are governing in the interest of all Guyanese. The same could not be said about the APNU+AFC. In fact, when the government began rolling out the GOAL initiative, it was the APNU+AFC Coalition that tried to hinder its success. Guyanese should ask themselves why the Coalition was so against the GOAL to begin with. The programme will benefit so many of our young scholars so there ought to be no negativity surrounding it. Yet still, the Coalition was and continues to be critical of it to the point that they were encouraging persons not to apply. They also ran with the narrative that the government would discriminate against Afro-Guyanese when selecting who would receive the scholarships. As far as I can see, nothing of the sort happened and both Afro-Guyanese and Indo-Guyanese were treated equally.

Yours sincerely,
Erin Northe