Dear Editor,
Public utilities remain unreliable, blackouts persist, brown water is coming through our pipes. In aviation, the public is still awaiting the overdue report into the GDF helicopter crash, an issue directly tied to safety, accountability, and public confidence, and one that falls squarely within the Director General of the Ministry of Public Utilities and Aviation responsibility. Instead, the Director General has elected to involve himself in political rebuttal, dismissing internationally recognised findings on hunger and poverty as “outdated” while offering no credible, current assessment of his own.
More revealing is his decision to characterise substantive criticism from a woman leader as “emotional.” That language is neither accidental nor analytical. It is misogyny, routinely used to diminish women’s authority when their arguments are inconvenient. Poverty and hunger are not abstract modelling exercises. They are lived realities for women managing households, for children attending school hungry, and for elderly citizens struggling under inflation. Acknowledging that reality is not emotion, it is honesty.
There is also a broader governance failure that cannot be ignored. Technical agencies such as the Maritime Administration and the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority are not political instruments. They are meant to be apolitical regulators, guided by evidence, professional standards, and public safety. Increasingly, however, these agencies are being used as channels for government propaganda, at the direction of political operatives.
The Director General’s role is not to facilitate this erosion, but to prevent it. When technical agencies are politicised, international regulatory credibility collapses and public trust follows. Maritime safety, aviation oversight, and utilities governance cannot coexist with partisan messaging. The irony is that the Director General himself notes that serious discussion requires honesty about data. What is missing is his honesty about governance.
The issue is not the IDB nor the time period of any report. The issue is a government increasingly intolerant of scrutiny and senior officials more comfortable operating as sycophants to ingratiate themselves with the ruling administration and focused more on peddling narratives than delivering real results.
If the Director General wishes to engage further, the expectations are clear. Deliver reliable utilities. Defend the independence of technical agencies. Release the helicopter accident report (with necessary redactions if need be). Until then, his interventions add nothing to public understanding and detract from the credibility of the office he holds.