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And most confidently it can be told, the name Priya Manickchand isn’t synonymous with any form of leadership. For the concept of leadership, which will forever be foreign to her, speaks to the art of motivating a group of people to act toward achieving a common goal. That is, leadership represents that ability to influence followers, for want of a better term, to arrive at an outcome beneficial to an organisation, or in this context a Ministry.
But beyond the aforementioned, a leader must possess a set of innate qualities, in which paramount is that ability to embrace responsibility and accountability, in circumstances when things haven’t gone to plan.
Having said that, it can be stated with unerring confidence, Priya Manickchand, installed Education Minister, has never had a grasp on leadership. For it was under her watch, if her tenure could be so described, that disaster after disaster struck our education sector. In fact, it was under her watch, that four of our schools with no fire safety devices, were reduced to smouldering ashes in 2yrs.
As a matter of fact, one would have thought that after the first or even second school was made an inferno, lessons would’ve been learnt, to prevent further infernos. But sadly, the incompetent Priya Manickchand, blinded by incandescent arrogance, failed to learn lessons, even as the catastrophes escalated in gravity.
Which means, with no lessons learnt, the grilled Mahdia school was a lighted match away from a fiery catastrophe. And a catastrophe of historic proportions it was, with 20 children reduced to crematorium ashes, even as 37 were burnt with irreversible psychological scars.
Moreover, with no lessons learnt by the installed minister, saw the four schools that were made an inferno, experiencing extensive delays in their reconstruction. And the consequence of these delays, was that our children of more than 2yrs Covid learning loss, having further learning losses, as the PPP corrupt contractors matched Priya Manickchand’s incompetence.
But shockingly, Priya Manickchand is worse than an incompetent installed minister, as evidenced by the aforementioned catastrophes, which illuminate her propensity to not accept responsibility and accountability. For the infernos at the four schools, she refused to take responsibility, even as she turned a blind eye to accountability.
And the lengthy delays in reconstruction of the said schools, along with other schools, she effortlessly shifted responsibility and accountability. In fact, the Mahdia inferno which took the lives of twenty beautiful children, she wrote a long Stabroek News epistle, completely disowning responsibility and accountability.
However, the very Priya Manickchand who shy away from responsibility and accountability, would be the first in line to accept praises, when outcomes are commendable. As a result, whenever NGSA, CSEC and CAPE results are out, she would rush out in a state of diaphoretic hyperventilation, opportunistically embracing the top students, ensuring the images are captured on all media headlines.
The fact is, year after year, a significant percentage of our children are failing at these exams, but responsibility and accountability shy Priya Manickchand would careless. Moreover, with the vast majority of these failures being disproportionately of the lower socioeconomic class, one would’ve expected remedial policies from Priya Manickchand, but then again, she careless.
Therefore, in Priya Manickchand, we have an incompetent installed minister who would shamelessly shy away from responsibility and accountability, when faced with negative outcomes. As a result, consistent with her modus operandi, she blamed the decline in our children’s CSEC English and Maths performance, on the recent teachers’ strike.
However, so shameless she is, even as she rushed to blame our teachers for the decline in Maths and English, she immediately took ownership of those results that were positive. Thus, the conclusion is irrefutable, Priya Manickchand is an embarrassingly shameless installed minister, who is grossly incompetent, even as she is responsibility and accountability averse.
