…in health
Hot on the heels of the scandal in the renting of a “bottom house” warehouse to store Guyana’s pharmaceuticals – which is supposed to secure our health as a nation! – comes news that the Government has scrapped the idea of a Specialty Hospital. What’s going on with the mavens in charge of our health sector?
On the Pharma storage front, it’s not just the evident graft and venality that most folks are holding their nose about, that’s bothering your Eyewitness today. It’s the blatant disregard for our health. Pharmaceuticals aren’t like gravel and stones you bring down on barges from quarries and just dump into any old space. They’re carefully and rigorously manufactured and packaged items that must be stored so as to ensure their active ingredients aren’t “denatured”. It’s not just the “spoilt drugs” mightn’t do their job…they could actually harm us!
And we’re gonna see the culprits walk away without even a slap on the wrist! With the main culprit being a doctor who took the Hippocratic oath – which exhorts him to “first do no harm”! Then imagine Norton took time to point out that he would be “apologising to the Speaker” for “misleading” the House. That is, he’s thumbing his nose to the Opposition folks to whom he LIED – he’s not apologising to THEM!
And we come to the Specialty Hospital. So the facility was good for Guyana up and until Fedders Lloyd was the contractor for the US million structure? Meaning until Minister and Vice President Khemraj Ramjattan was still being their agent – all for no fee, of course. But what does it say about Ramjattan’s noble sacrifice for this country to deny a fee just for us to have a higher level of medical care?
Have those who cancelled the project no respect for Ramjattan’s acumen on the project. Do they know what a sacrifice it is for a lawyer to forego a fee? Try pulling a bloody torso from the jaws of a shark, and you’ll get an idea! Surely the project wasn’t cancelled because Fedders Lloyd was disqualified by the World Bank for “improper practices” in Africa? They bribed people? Gasp!
But the loss of the Specialty Hospital goes to the nub of why our economy’s foundering under this Administration. The Specialty Hospital was not just for raising the bar in medical practice here – it was suppose to be the beginning of a whole new industry – medical tourism. The externalities – as the economists dub them – from the hospital would’ve percolated into the entire economy. Including hotel rooms for the individuals who typically accompany the patients.
But what do these philistinism know?
…confidential SOCU leaks?
Now that the Govt has finally accepted the clear line of authority over SOCU – the Special Organised Crime Unit – flowing through the Commissioner of Police, we know then that the buck ultimately stops with the Public Security Minister. So why’s he not doing what he has to do about that great tragedy that was perpetuated when the wife of a young Army officer was killed as he took orders from the GDF?
From the very beginning, SOCU was supposed to be under the Police Commissioner – for the simple reason that its head was made into a Deputy Police Commissioner! But there was all sorts of buck-passing when that operation turned sour. Now this is a very dangerous situation when you’re talking about military types, who need to know precisely what’s their chain of command.
And while he’s at it, can he follow the trail as to who leaked the confidential info on the bank accounts of the Phone Card PS?
…in legal tuition
Could someone please tell this Eyewitness what exactly are the criteria for “assisting” Law Graduates to the Hugh Wooding programme?? And why?
Now Guyana has a lot of unfulfilled needs. But creating more lawyers at the taxpayers’ expense?
Isn’t that like creating the pit bull that’ll maul you in the end?
