Dear Editor,
The government is now moving to have students put their names on the National Grade Six Assessment examination papers without any explanation as to the reasons for this move. No public consultations and/or meeting with the schools’ PTA have been held.
No attempts have been made to get the views/opinions of stakeholders. As former Minister of Education Priya Manickchand said in a letter to the media, the practice of putting only the candidate’s number has been in place for a number of years and no problem ever developed from this.
Indeed, this is a practice that is in effect throughout the Caribbean and is acceptable worldwide.
This method helps with objectivity, since the markers would not know who the students are, their names, ethnicity, religion, etc.
The big concern in Guyana is that Indo-Guyanese are being subjected to blatant discrimination in almost every area of life.
Since the APNU+AFC assumed office, they have been carrying out massive discrimination campaigns against this particular ethnicity. Hundreds of Indo-Guyanese have been purged from the public service and this continues to happen every day. Indian managers at GuySuCo and other semi-autonomous agencies are being fired or are awaiting their time to come.
Many Indians are being threatened to have their house lots (which were legally allocated to them) withdrawn and many are being threatened to be evicted from core homes, which they obtained during the PPP/C administration.
Now the long arm of the government seems to be focused on the students.
This is a take-up from where the PNC left off during 1964 – 1992.
When they wanted to purge the University of Guyana of Indo-Guyanese, they put National Service in place. This system got rid of hundreds of students from that institution.
Those who stayed were subjected to harsh treatment. Some even died in the camps at Papaya and other locations due to the mistreatments they received.
Reports of rape and/or other forms of forced sex on women were not infrequent during the National Service era.
In this context, insisting that students put their names on exam papers must give rise to great suspicions.
None of the actions of the regime has given any confidence that Indo-Guyanese students would not be discriminated against. The feeling that they would be marked down or made to fail is not without basis.
This is a real concern and genuine fear.
If the regime does not plan to discriminate against these students, they must immediately scrap this new policy. It makes no sense at all to foster more suspicions in this society of ours.
Sincerely,
Donald Ramotar
Former President
