OPPOSITION Member of Parliament (MP), Maureen Philadelphia, on Thursday, apologised to the National Assembly for misleading statements she made at a previous sitting of the House.
During the 81st sitting of the National Assembly, Speaker Manzoor Nadir highlighted that during the budget debates earlier this year, Philadelphia made statements which the Minister of Education challenged.

Nadir said: “The honourable member Ms Philadelphia wrote me at the end of those debates saying she did apologise in writing in an email and said she would do so in the House at the next sitting.”

Against this backdrop, Philadelphia was called upon to make good on her word and stood in the House to withdraw the comment.

Part of the statement which the opposition MP had to withdraw included conjectures about teachers graduating from the country’s teacher’s training college without having their final grades presented.

She was quoted as saying: “The Honourable Minister boasts of 99 per cent trained teachers and the world is aware of the hard truth. Teachers who dropped out of college after the first semester graduated.”

At the time, Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand challenged these statements and noted that they were untrue.

Manickchand during her presentations on the 2024 National Budget highlighted that Guyana is now seeing 99 per cent of its teachers trained or currently undergoing training.

She further noted that in 2023, 1,796 teachers graduated from the Cyril Potter College of Education; this was the largest number of teachers ever trained in the history of Guyana.

Two other APNU-AFC Members of Parliament Cathy Hughes and Juretha Fernandes had also withdrawn and apologised to the House for making wholly untrue claims regarding the education sector.