Ministry of Education responds to Elijah Bijay’s letter in today’s Stabroek News

The Ministry of Education has noted, with concern, a letter appearing in the Stabroek News of Saturday 19th March 2022, titled “Reportedly, the government has withdrawn funding from the Adult Education Association”. The writer, Mr. Elijah Bijay complains of the government’s intention to reduce the subvention to the Adult Association of Guyana. This complaint is fallacious. The AEA was allocated $47 847 000 in the 2021 budget. For 2022, the AEA has been allocated $52 000 000. This is an increase of more than four million dollars. This information is available to the public on the Ministry of Finance’s website.

The Ministry of Education is fully aware of the contributions that the AEA has made and continues to make to education in Guyana. The Ministry of Education is currently exploring the ‘Open-School’ concept and it is expected that the AEA will be a major player in this initiative. Additionally, the Ministry of Education is aware of several steps taken by the AEA, because of the pandemic, to digitalize its offerings to the students of Guyana. It should be added that most of these initiatives have had a high degree of success.

We wish to caution Mr. Bijay on the need to decipher fact from fiction. In this case, a simple internet search would have served that purpose.