… while Minister stresses cooperation in nation’s forward thrustWith no specific programme of budgetary allocation to deal with school-based violence in place there remains a problem, which according to A Partnership for National Unity (APNU)’s Renis Morian, “has gone beyond and beyond” leaving officials within the Ministry of Education at their wits’ end.Minister of Education, Priya ManickchandThe APNU’s Region 10 Representative’s remarks were forthcoming as he offered his contribution when the ongoing parliamentary debates on the 2013 budget continued Wednesday evening.The budget provisions, according to Morian, are yet to address “the state of our teachers in the riverain areas. If you check the records in the month of December, teachers had to leave…roofs were blown off,Killian Tillie Jersey, steps collapsed, and a whole lot of things went wrong. There is nothing in the budget that speaks to improving the lack of teachers in the riverain areas”.A passionate Morian insisted that the problem is an even greater one as he alluded to the importance of disaster preparedness.He emphasised that the existing challenges cannot be fixed by political rhetoric, adding that “monies have to be spent; monies have to be committed to Regional Democratic Councils…to the people who are elected to serve the people who understand the nature of the problems. We can’t stay in Georgetown and promote a budget with huge numbers but basically there is no output from such a budget,” said Morian as he questioned “Can I support a budget that speaks to my underdevelopment?”However, Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand, as she rose to defend the 2013 budget insisted that although there are evident challenges in the various sectors, there is need for “not the government alone, but for all of us to work together to build Guyana. This is the Guyana that this 2013 budget will help us to advance.”Taking a clever swipe at the parliamentary opposition, Manickchand insisted that highlighting shortcomings are a much easier task than working towards overcoming the prevailing challenges.“I would be the first to tell you that if you want to find something wrong with a system come to the sector over which I have responsibility. When you are dealing with 10,000 teachers and 300,000 children in 1,000 schools you are bound to find something every single hour of every single day that is wrong in that structure. That is the way it is. That is what we are dealing with.”The Minister said that it is for this reason that no attempt is ever made to resent constructive criticism, even as she added that there is always a crucial need for collaboration to overcome and move past challenges.“First world countries will tell you that they have challenges…the United States of America… in some places like Alabama they don’t have running water. But in recognising these challenges and in trying to overcome them it requires us to do more than ‘wax lyrical’ in this House. We will have to put our shoulders to the wheel,” Manickchand firmly asserted.APNU’s Region 10 Rep., Renis MorianShe pointed out that much in the same way that Guyana will always remain below sea level “we will always have challenges of the kinds of needs if we are to become and sustain the status of a first world country.” As such, she noted that the Finance Minister, Dr. Ashni Singh, in his presentation of the budget, merely asked that “we overcome our challenges together and accelerate our gains for Guyana.”Minister Manickchand affirmed that “I would be the first to say that if we were to combine our efforts – government and opposition – we could get more for the people than any one side by itself and so we call on the opposition in going forward. There is time and there is space for this destructive behaviour that has gone hitherto to change. There is space for us to hold hands and take all of Guyana’s peoples forward”.
