There is a saying that no news is good news. The government really believes in this saying so it says nothing to the nation. This is reminiscent of the man who fell from the 25th floor of a hotel. As he was falling he counted the floors he happened to be passing. And he kept saying, “So far so good.”
There is another saying, “What you don’t know can’t hurt you.” Some men use this as an excuse not to visit the doctor. The government also believes in this saying.
The report on the helicopter crash is still a secret. A helicopter carrying seven military personnel went down in the vicinity of Olive Creek in the Middle Mazaruni on December 6, 2023. Five of the seven-member crew died.
There was speculation that Venezuela had shot down the helicopter which was flying in Guyana airspace. The crash happened about 30 miles east of Arau near the Venezuelan border. Arau is an army camp on the border Guyana shares with Venezuela.
Chief of Staff of the Guyana Defence Force, Brig Omar Khan, ruled out the possibility of Venezuela shooting down the helicopter.
The army found the helicopter and the survivors the following day. This should have been a wakeup call to Guyana about its response time.
The black box was recovered and according to reports quoting the government, the black box was sent overseas for analysis.
It has since been returned to Guyana but for some reason no report has been made available to the public. There was some talk about some government official saying that the black box had been damaged.
That caused me to wonder. The black box is almost indestructible. An American Airlines jet collided with a Blackhawk helicopter near the Ronald Reagan Airport in the United States on January 25, this year.
Sixty-seven people died aboard both aircraft. The crash resulted in a fireball. Both aircraft ended in the frigid Potomac River. The black boxes were recovered.
Less than a month later information recovered from the black boxes of both aircraft had been analysed. The American public has been made aware of what transpired. They told a story of the helicopter flying above the height it was supposed to be.
Information from the black box aboard reported that the helicopter had seen the aircraft and would avoid it.
In Guyana, more than a year later, and people are still to be told what actually happened. A web of silence surrounds the incident. Even the families of the killed soldiers are being told nothing.
All that is being said is that a draft report has been prepared and that it has been sent to the various stakeholders for correction. What is there to correct? But I never flew a plane so I do not know the protocol.
What I do know is that within two months the American public had been told more about that crash than the Guyanese people have been told about theirs.
That is not the only thing that the government is silent about. It is silent about the gas to energy programme. No one knows about the state of the site for the plant. There was word that a contract has been awarded to a foreign company to construct the plant.
The completion date of the project is said to be some time in 2026. It was proudly announced early this year that the project would have been completed in August.
Through former minister David Patterson, we know that the pipeline has been laid. We do not know if Guyana has to begin paying Exxon for the pipeline and how much.
It was the same with the Skeldon Sugar Factory that failed and saddled the country with more than US$200 million in debt.
Guyana is paying back China for the loan but there is no information on the repayment.
If no news is good news, then it is good news from the 2022 Census. No information is forthcoming. No one knows the size of the population, or the size of the workforce. There is no information on the ethnic composition of the country.
When the government announced its cash grant there was a question about the number of Guyanese who were 18 and above. There could have been no answer to those who really want to know. The census should have provided that information.
There is no news when President Irfaan Ali is travelling overseas. Sometimes, the nation would get reports while he is overseas. Something that was once a regular feature, the swearing in of the Prime Minister to perform the duties of president, is a memory. The wider public simply does not know.
Unlike the Coalition which announced a pay rise for the Ministers and the parliamentarians, no such information is imparted to the public. The surprise when it became known that the lowest Minister earns more than $1 million per month was stunning.
When the coalition announced the pay hike, the then PPP General Secretary, Clement Rohee, said that no member would take the money. Instead, they would donate the money to charity, he said.
There was never any news of the charities that received the money. The charity must have been the recipients themselves.
Terrence Campbell, a member of the Natural Resource Fund Investment Committee has gone to the court to find out how the money drawn from the Fund has been spent.
There is just no news on this.
