My 2024 chagrin: Fitness certificate and UG

Senior state sector officials are entitled to duty free vehicles. If on receipt of their letter, the vehicle cost $6 million, they will pay half of that amount. The concession is renewed every three years. If after three years, the car they want still cost $6 million, they won’t spend $3 million as they did before because they will sell their three year old car and take that money to buy their next duty free car.

Imagine if a Guyanese holder of a duty free letter changes a car every three years what happens in Japan. Very few people in Japan drive a car older than five years because new models come out every year. The point is, in Guyana, the vehicles we use are very good stuff. Why then the police are asking car-owners to get a certificate of fitness every year?

There is no research whatsoever, and I repeat whatsoever, that defective cars are the reason for our high vehicular accident rate. The reason is reckless use of a vehicle. There is no statistic available in this country that shows that any percentage of old cars is the cause of our mountainous road accidents.
Why then do we persist with the yearly requirement of fitness certificate? I have a 2020 car named Raize. It is only four years old. Why do I have to get a yearly fitness paper for it? Another compelling reason to do away with the fitness check is the capacity of the police force to inspect vehicles.

It is an impossible task in Guyana and the vehicular population rises every six months by 10, 000. Where is the manpower to get officers to write a fitness document? Here is my suggestion. Do away with the requirement for vehicles 10 years and under. Keep the requirement for vehicles between 10 and 15 years but make it every three years. For cars 15 years and older, you need a fitness paper but make it every two years. Certificate of fitness is an anachronism and 2024 should be the last year of its existence.

Next is UG. The year 2024 should be the last year of online classes. What I am about to write will shock you. Do you know last November thousands graduated without physically entering a class room with other students and a lecturer for the entire four years of their student days? Don’t take my word for it. Investigate it.

In last Sunday newspapers, the Minister of Education said she received reports of some classes being fully online which she opined reduces UG to an online teaching institution. But UG has been an online university from 2020 and those enrolled in 2020 graduated without classroom experience. The entire world went back to the class room after Covid 19 in 2021 except UG. I say except UG because I believe this to be so.

UG has just started a new academic year, yet half the classes are online. One of the most priceless experiences in life is to taste campus life. This is a unique feeling that last in your memory bank forever. The Guyanese society should not have tolerated this atrocity. Last year should have been the end of UG being an online institution.

I was asked to serve on the UG Council and I would have liked to but I had to decline over my respect for President Ali. The confrontations would have been endless because I know UG’s ontology is a problematic one with overtones of incestuousness, victimization and incompetence. People complain to me about mistreatment at UG all the time. There would have been endless complaints to President Ali about Freddie Kissoon and in turn I would have to bother the president with my side of the stories.

I leave you with my experience with UG Vice Chancellor (VC), Dr. Paloma Mohamed. We live in the same compound on UG Road. I was searching the compound for my neighbour’s lost cat which I undertook to look after in her absence from the country. I was looking in the VC’s yard when she drove up with her husband. They watched as I searched for the cat but did not speak to me.

The next day, the VC went on the email string of the residents and demanded to know why I was looking into her yard. I was not on the string but Chronicle Sunday columnist, Rampertab explained to the VC what I was doing.
I was numb at the VC’s reaction to me. I knew this lady for over 20 years and never had said or wrote a negative thing about her. For more on this incident, see my Friday, September 13, 2024 column, titled, “The ghost that follows me.” I guess the VC heard I was coming back to UG. She heard wrongly.

DISCLAIMER: The views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Guyana National Newspapers Limited.

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