Dear Editor,
I read a letter addressed to the media from Othneil Lewis, the Chairman of the Sixth Form Student Council at Nations, and wanted to add some thoughts to what I thought was an excellent letter.
None of the, albeit very few, responses that I have seen in the media supporting the 14 per cent VAT on private education addressed the issue of the 1300 ABE students in Guyana, who simply have nowhere else to go. Only three private schools in Guyana offer these internationally accredited courses. It should be noted too that they each offer these courses at about 35 per cent of the fee charged for exactly the same programme in neighbouring Trinidad and Tobago.
Othneil mentioned the potential consequences if even a handful of persons dropped out of education as a result of the 14 per cent added tax. Our estimate, based on persons who have come into Nations to talk with us, suggest that the figure is not three persons, it could easily be 50 times that number or indeed far, far more.
Ministers have been quoted in the media as saying that only eight of 57 private schools are tax complaint. Many of us fail to understand the relevance of that argument in this emotive debate. Recently, it has been said a number of times that the great majority of private schools are not paying their fair share of tax or have found some form of tax loophole. If this is accurate, where is the justice in this, and why cannot this injustice be easily remedied by the authorities?
Only a little while ago we were promised “a new beginning” in the country. There are now 1400 comments on the electronic version of our petition that question whether those promises have been honoured. What should we say to the thousands of persons we have encountered over the past few weeks who are now disillusioned, dispirited and thoroughly discouraged by the apparent insensitivity of ignoring the views of thousands and thousands of persons who are against the 14 per cent VAT on private education?
The comments on the online petition have been made by people of all backgrounds, all races and the full spectrum of this society, and by persons throughout this country, and hundreds more from the Diaspora and many from other countries all over the world.
We plan now to redouble our efforts with both the paper and electronic versions of the petition, fully supported by a number of the other private schools, and will then resubmit the latest figures re the petition again next Friday.
We understand that others are now moving to the streets to protest, like they have in recent times in so many countries throughout the world in response to what they see as injustice. That has never been our proposed method. Our, perhaps rather naïve, hope has been that reason and rational argument would win the day. It seems now that the cynics had a clearer understanding of the reality than us and now we may have to follow the way of the protest, “boots on the ground is the only way” as one jaded cynic told us. Our youthful hope was that things could have been done differently; it seems now, very sadly, that the cynics were right. I wonder if we could still prove them wrong?
Yours faithfully,
Dr Brian O’Toole
