Archive for category: News

Built on Paper, Burned in Practice

OPINION BY :Hem Kumar September 2026

How a year of documented warnings, a free offer of labour, and a sixty-three-year-old statute converged on Regent Street

On Regent Street, a three-storey commercial building burned to its frame while firefighters worked hoses that could not push water above the third floor. One ladder truck and one pumper answered the call. A hand-lettered sign at the scene, held up beside a mud-caked hydrant, read: A BLOCKED HYDRANT COSTS LIVES. The scene was captured, catalogued, and will pass into the record of Guyanese fire disasters alongside New Amsterdam in 2009 and Bush Lot in 2024 — each one attributed, after the fact, to the same defects: obstructed or inoperable hydrants, inadequate pressure, and equipment arriving to contain a fire that proactive systems should have arrested at its source.

Fire raging beyond control- low water pressure

What distinguishes Regent Street is not the failure. It is that the failure was predicted, in writing, in public, more than once, by more than one person — and that the government had, at multiple points in the preceding year, a costless or near-costless path to a different outcome. It did not take it. This is the record of that failure to act, assembled from the public correspondence itself.

A WARNING FILED TWICE, A YEAR BEFORE THE FIRE

In October 2025, following a fatal gas station explosion, this publication’s editor wrote to the national press diagnosing Guyana’s fire protection regime as “virtually non-existent” in its proactive measures, and called for immediate reform of the Fire and Building Codes to mandate automatic sprinkler systems, early-warning detection networks, automatic fuel shutoff systems at filling stations, and a standing inspection and certification regime that would apply for the life of a building, not merely at construction.

A second letter followed in November 2025, restating the argument in more technical depth — naming fire curtains, thermally activated vents, and clean-agent suppression systems for sensitive installations — and identifying, by name, the structural pattern that has since repeated itself on Regent Street: a “response-only approach” in which “firefighting equipment and stations … are merely implements in reactive mode” rather than a substitute for prevention built into the buildings themselves.

“A reactive fire service, no matter how well-equipped, arrives after the damage has begun.”

Both letters cited the same case in evidence: a filling station explosion that killed one person and injured several others, at a facility with no suppression system installed. Both called, explicitly, for the same remedy: statutory reform, not appeals to goodwill. Neither received a public response from the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Public Works, or the Cabinet. As of Regent Street, eleven months later, no amendment to the Fire and Building Codes had been tabled, debated, or enacted.

THE MAN WHO OFFERED TO DO IT FOR FREE

The clearest evidence that this was not a resourcing problem arrived independently, from a private citizen with no stake in the newsroom debate. Vishul Ishwaridin, owner of Fire Sprinkler & Safety Equipment Services in Ogle, East Coast Demerara, disclosed in a September 6, 2026 letter — published three days before Regent Street burned — that he had written “numerous letters to various ministries and government agencies” over “a considerable time” advocating mandatory sprinkler systems in schools, hospitals, ministries, and buildings three storeys and higher. He said he did not know whether those letters had reached the relevant authorities at all.

Ishwaridin did not stop at advocacy. He stated that he had repeatedly offered to install sprinkler systems at no labour cost — asking only that materials be paid for — first during construction of the new Good Hope Secondary School and Christ Church Secondary School, the latter a three-storey structure he flagged as a significant evacuation risk. At the time of his letter, Queen’s College and St. Stanislaus Secondary School were under construction on new three-storey buildings, and he had renewed the same free offer for both. He asked, by name, for the Ministry of Education or the Ministry of Home Affairs to contact him.

A working contractor offered free labor to fire-proof two of the nation’s flagship schools. The record shows no reply.

There is no evidence in the public record that either ministry responded. This is not a case of a government weighing competing budget priorities against a costed proposal. It is a case of a proposal that removed cost as an obstacle entirely, addressed to two named ministries, going unanswered — a data point about administrative practice, not fiscal constraint.

A STATUTE THE FIRE SERVICE ITSELF CALLED WEAK — NINE YEARS AGO

The legal foundation beneath all of this is the Fire Prevention Act, Chapter 22:01 of the Laws of Guyana — enacted in 1954 and amended exactly once, in 1963. The Act empowers the Chief Fire Officer to inspect premises and issue written notices where a fire hazard is found; non-compliance with a notice carries escalating daily fines and, for commercial premises, a closure order. It contains no provision requiring automatic sprinklers, detection systems, or suppression technology of any kind. Compliance under the Act is inspection-and-notice, not embedded, self-activating protection — precisely the reactive model this publication and others have been arguing is structurally inadequate.

The Fire Service’s own leadership has been on record about this gap for the better part of a decade. In 2017, Chief Fire Prevention Officer Andrew Holder told the press that the Guyana Fire Service had been “calling for the Act to be amended” to give the Service stronger power to prosecute those responsible for causing fires, describing the existing framework as “weak” and its penalty structure — a fine as low as G$25 for a first breach — as “highly inconsequential.” That was nine years before Regent Street. The request came from inside the institution charged with enforcement, not from an outside critic. It was not acted on then, and it has not been acted on since.

THE TIMELINE

WHAT THIS ESTABLISHES

Taken individually, each of these facts might be read as an isolated oversight. Taken together, they describe an administrative posture, not a series of accidents:

• A statute nine years past its own enforcement agency’s request for amendment, unchanged for sixty-three years.
• Two public warnings, a year apart, naming the precise failure mode that materialized on Regent Street, met with no recorded government response.
• A private contractor’s written offer of free suppression-system installation at two flagship secondary schools, going unanswered by two named ministries.
• A pre-fire inspection report, published one month before Regent Street, documenting the exact hydrant obstructions that would later prove fatal to the response.
• Billions in fire service budget allocations across two fiscal years, including sums specifically earmarked for hydrant repair and installation, alongside a building loss that those allocations were meant to prevent.

None of this required new money to begin correcting. It required a ministry to answer a letter, a Cabinet to table a sixty-three-year-old bill for amendment, and an inspection regime to close the loop between finding an obstructed hydrant and clearing it. Each of those is an administrative act, not a budgetary one — which is what makes the pattern one of lax administrative practice rather than scarce resources.

WHAT SHOULD FOLLOW

The Ministry of Home Affairs should confirm, on the record, whether it received either of the 2025 letters or Ishwaridin’s correspondence, and what action, if any, followed. The Ministry of Education should state whether it has responded to the standing free-installation offer for Queen’s College and St. Stanislaus. Cabinet should be asked directly why the Fire Prevention Act has not been amended since 1963, and whether the 2017 request from the Fire Service’s own Chief Fire Prevention Officer was ever formally considered. And the Guyana Fire Service should publish what its Aug 12, 2026 Regent Street inspection notice actually required of the property, and whether that notice was ever enforced under Section 8 before the fire.

Billions have been budgeted. A tradesman offered his labour for nothing. A year of warnings sits in the public record under the bylines of people with no institutional power to compel the reform they were asking for. What has been missing throughout is not money, and not warning. It is an administration willing to read the letters it receives.

— The Board

Jagdeo runs to front, reads the riot act -Pt II

OPINION BY : GHK LALL September 2026

Never knew Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo to be sneaky.  Sloppy, hostility personified, and sleeker than mercury, he can be.  But not sneaky, not he.  Hence, I weigh why he waited until Pres Ali’s back was turned to show his face at the Arthur Chung Convention Center and beat the daylights out of ministers, permanent secretaries, and regional heads.  It was off with his gloves, and off with the heads of those ministers and public servants, who don’t do right by procurement laws and regulations.  What follows does no favors to Dr. Jagdeo and the PPP Govt.

Regarding Dr. Jagdeo being sneaky in waiting for Dr. Ali to sail to Middle Eastern enchantments and intrigues before opening his mouth, I avoid people’s domestic business.  It’s their affair.  Nonetheless, this I say: Regional Executives were handpicked by Pres Ali.  Ministers were selected by Pres Ali.  All report to Pres Ali.  On paper, a least.  So, also, the Permanent Secretaries who owe their paycheck and bureaucratic life to Pres Ali.  The man is a doctor, remember.  So, what crafty, clandestine operation was Dr. Jagdeo conducting when Mr. Ali is away?  Who’s the real boss?

 But there was Jagdeo warning about breaches and bristling with menace about penalties.  When Kaieteur News, Glenn Lall, and this Lall (and others) pounded the corruption-in-procurement culture, Dr. Jagdeo reserved entire Thursday afternoons to rail and rant, to defend and minimize (poohpooh), the corruption problem.  So, what was he doing before those ministers and senior government (PPP) officials?  I say it is tacitly admitting that SN, KN, and the Lalls were right; while he was playing his usual deflecting, skirting around, and minimizing games.  Jagdeo should show the Samurai spirit.  Be man enough to swallow all that vitriol and venom that he spat so profusely during his pre-sundown meltdown Thursdays.  Excellency Ali had his pre-sunup beatdown of contractors and others during an Xmas season.  Jagdeo did better: a pre-sundown blast at people not answerable to him.

Relative to the PPP Govt’s position on corruption, I can’t say much, because the president hasn’t said anything.  But the shadow of corruption-in-procurement (billions) is what sent Vice President Jagdeo ballistic.  He can’t take it anymore.  Tells Guyanese how monstrous the corruption beast is.  When a man like Jagdeo has to sound off on breaches and consequences, it’s over. 

Forget about kettle and fish.  The dam collapsed.  I am glad he has found religion, see the light, is frank with the problem.

Corruption and a cavalier attitude led to the MV Barima going down, and 100 poor Guyanese dead, as if the PPP had ordered it.  The death toll, the dollar toll, the public relations toll, have all combined to become the group’s biggest nightmare.  No COI, no big talk, no sweet talk, from anyone makes one difference, one heart changed, one thought withdrawn.  It as if the PPP killed those 100-plus people.

Cost-of-living pauperizing Guyanese, and Jagdeo and Ali once denounced anyone who said so.  Now the president telling Guyanese their eating habits contributed to cost-of-living killing them.  Blackouts torment Guyanese, and the GPL says Guyanese self-destructing. 

Overuse of fans, lights, and ACs.  Corruption throughout Guyana brought the PPP to this mentality of pin-the-tail-of-the-donkey on the people.  Government takes no responsibility.  Next, the PPP will blame Exxon for finding oil, and the Americans for helping it win elections. 

Even the no confidence man, the High Commissioner, may not be spared.

I see a government with its hair and underwear on fire.  There was Jagdeo at the Convention Center trying to put out fires, and cremating himself. 

Whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad.  Try my parable: whom the gods wish to taunt, they torture, then tear apart.  Breaches have consequences was the first thunderbolt.

INTERNATIONAL ACCOUNTABILITY

A Frontrunner’s Record: Rodrigues-Birkett, the UN Secretariat, and the Question of Impartiality

OPINION BY : Hem Kumar—September, 2026

Carolyn Rodrigues-Birkett, Guyana’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations and a former Minister of Foreign Affairs, emerged as the frontrunner to succeed António Guterres as UN Secretary-General following an August 21, 2026 straw poll of the Security Council, in which she received eight “encourage” votes to seven apiece for Rafael Grossi of Argentina and Rebeca Grynspan of Costa Rica. The poll is non-binding. Whoever ultimately succeeds Guterres must still secure Security Council backing without a veto from any of its five permanent members — a threshold that turns as much on great-power politics as on merit.

For a Guyanese candidacy, the stakes are difficult to overstate. A Rodrigues-Birkett secretary-generalship would make her Guyana’s second UN Secretary-General nominee in the country’s history and would place a Guyanese diplomat, for the first time, in the highest administrative office in the international system. It would also make her the first Indigenous  woman to hold the post.

That prospect has now drawn a pointed challenge from an unlikely but influential venue: the opinion page of the Wall Street Journal. In a column published August 31, 2026, Elliot Kaufman argues that Rodrigues-Birkett’s diplomatic record — specifically her statements on Cuba and on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — deserves far more scrutiny than a frontrunner’s status has so far received.

THE CASTRO TRIBUTE

Kaufman’s column opens with a moment from 2013, when Rodrigues-Birkett, then serving as Guyana’s Foreign Minister, marked the fortieth anniversary of Guyana-Cuba diplomatic relations. Speaking on that occasion, she said:

To speak about Cuba, its achievements, its resilience, its focus on human development, cannot be done without paying tribute to the visionary, determined, revolutionary behind it all, Comandante Fidel Castro. . . . Let us also pay tribute to Comandante Fidel not only for what he has done for Guyana, but also for humanity at large.

This newsroom has independently confirmed the substance of this episode. Argentine outlet Infobae, reporting the same day as the Journal, corroborates that in January 2013 Rodrigues-Birkett brought a motion before Guyana’s National Assembly commemorating the anniversary — a motion that passed unanimously, paid tribute to Castro in terms consistent with Kaufman’s quotation, wished “long life and good health” to both Fidel and Raúl Castro, and called for an end to the United States embargo on Cuba.

A DIFFERENT REGISTER ON ISRAEL

Kaufman contrasts that tribute with what he characterizes as an approach to Israel that is, in his words, “full of invective.” He writes that Rodrigues-Birkett has repeatedly accused Israel before the Security Council of genocide, and has alleged that Israel harbors “colonialist aspirations, fueled by a racist and religious ideology of superiority.” He also cites a May 2024 statement in which she characterized Israeli evacuation orders in Gaza as issued “quite cynically,” which Kaufman argues ignored the operational reality of Israeli evacuation efforts around Rafah while Hamas continued to operate from within Gaza.

The centerpiece of Kaufman’s critique is a claim attributed to a September 2024 Security Council session, in which Rodrigues-Birkett is quoted as saying that the situation in Palestine “did not begin on 7 October 2023,” and that the Council “must cast our minds back to 1948 because it was in that year that Israel first violently rejected the two-state solution.” Kaufman disputes that account of 1948, noting that the Jewish community in Mandatory Palestine accepted the 1947 UN partition plan while Arab leaders rejected it, with war following in 1948 — the internationally accepted historical sequence.

On this specific claim, a note on our own verification: this newsroom was able to independently confirm, through Guyana’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs archive of her Security Council statements, that Rodrigues-Birkett has repeatedly invoked 1948 as the origin point of the Palestinian question across multiple 2024 Council sessions. A statement dated April 5, 2024 and a further statement dated April 18, 2024 — both accessed directly from the Ministry’s published record — describe the Palestinian people’s “expulsion from most of their homeland in 1948” as the starting point of a seven-decade injustice, language that closely tracks the framing Kaufman attributes to a September 2024 session. Infobae similarly dates a version of this framing to an April 2024 Middle East debate, quoting the official session record as showing Rodrigues-Birkett stating that the crisis “cannot be limited to October 7” and that the occupation and displacement of the Palestinian population since 1948 constitute “the real cause of the current conflict.”

We were not able to independently locate, in the time available, the precise September 2024 statement containing the specific formulation Kaufman quotes — that Israel “first violently rejected the two-state solution” in 1948. That exact phrase does not appear in the April 2024 statements we reviewed, which use different language centered on displacement and expulsion rather than a claimed Israeli rejection of partition. We are not in a position to confirm or dispute Kaufman’s specific attribution of that phrase to a named September session, though the broader pattern he describes; invoking 1948 as the conflict’s true origin, ahead of October 7 — is amply and independently documented in Guyana’s own diplomatic record across the year.

THE FULLER RECORD

Our review of that same Ministry of Foreign Affairs archive surfaces a complication that Kaufman’s column, drawn from a limited set of quotations, does not fully capture. Rodrigues-Birkett’s Security Council statements on Gaza consistently and explicitly condemn Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, repeatedly call for the release of all hostages, and just as repeatedly invoke the need for a durable two-state solution as the only just resolution of the conflict. A representative statement from late 2023 records her saying: “Guyana has unequivocally condemned the October 7th attacks on Israel. We call again for the release of all hostages held in Gaza.” That formulation — condemnation of Hamas paired with sustained criticism of Israel’s conduct of the war — recurs across her statements through 2025.

None of this resolves the question Kaufman poses. A diplomat can condemn an atrocity and still, in the same breath or across a career of statements, advance a one-sided account of the conflict’s origins, or use language — “genocide,” “colonialist,” “racist ideology of superiority”; that a Secretary-General candidate might reasonably be expected to hold in reserve.

Kaufman’s argument is not that Rodrigues-Birkett has excused Hamas; it is that her rhetorical register toward Israel, sustained over several years at the Security Council, sits uneasily with the studied neutrality the UN’s chief administrative office is supposed to embody.

WHAT COMES NEXT

The straw poll that placed Rodrigues-Birkett ahead of Grossi and Grynspan is only the first of several expected rounds, and it carries no binding weight. The real test will come when the Security Council’s permanent members; the United States chief among them, given Washington’s historically fraught relationship with UN bodies perceived as hostile to Israel — decide whether to exercise or withhold a veto. Kaufman’s column, appearing in a publication read closely inside the Beltway and in foreign ministries well beyond it, is best understood as an opening move in that contest: an attempt to place Rodrigues-Birkett’s record, rather than her resume, at the center of the coming debate.

For Guyana, a country whose foreign policy establishment has invested real diplomatic capital in this candidacy, the coming weeks will test whether Georgetown’s preferred narrative — a seasoned, humanitarian-minded diplomat well placed to lead a fractured UN; can survive contact with a record that is now, for the first time, receiving international scrutiny at the volume the office demands.

Editor’s note: This piece cites the Wall Street Journal column by Elliot Kaufman (August 31, 2026) for claims attributed to him, and independently verified material — drawn directly from the Guyana Ministry of Foreign Affairs’ published archive of Security Council statements and from Infobae’s August 31, 2026 reporting — for claims presented as independently confirmed. Where our own verification could not confirm a specific quotation, that is stated explicitly above rather than presented as settled fact.

“The Speedboat and the Subpoena: What Ali’s Warning Actually Warned Against”

 OPINION BY: Hem Kumar, Editor September 2026

President Ali chose Amerindian Heritage Month’s opening ceremony to deliver a warning about opportunists arriving by speedboat with hampers and sympathy, chasing crises for personal survival. He did not name Azruddin Mohamed. He did not need to. Every clause was built to fit one man, and every listener in that room and beyond it understood who.

Start with the facts Ali’s framing asks Guyanese to forget. Mohamed reached Region One in the hours after the MV Barima went down — not weeks later, not after the news cycle made it safe. He has stayed engaged with survivors and victims’ families since, including launching his own initiative offering legal, medical, and financial assistance. Whatever one thinks of his politics, “suddenly appears in a crisis” does not describe one year of continued presence.

Then there’s the timing Ali’s speech asks Guyanese not to notice. He delivered this warning on September 1 — the same day the Caribbean Court of Justice dismissed the Mohameds’ latest bid to halt their extradition, and two days before Chief Magistrate Judy Latchman opened six straight days of committal hearings in Georgetown. The extradition case is not stalled by Mohamed’s Region One visits. It is proceeding, on schedule, through the courts, regardless of what he does or doesn’t do for Barima families. If Ali’s theory is that grievance politics is Mohamed’s “ticket to avoid jail,” the calendar itself refutes it: the ticket he’d need doesn’t exist.

A timeline of its own delay. What makes the speech worse than opportunistic is what it distracts from. The Commission of Inquiry was sworn in July 30. As of this writing, more than five weeks later, it still has no firm public-hearings start date — only an assurance that hearings will begin “later this month.” In the interim, the Commission reports it has visited the area where the vessel sank and gathered information on its seaworthiness, and is collecting documents from MARAD, the Transport and Harbors Department, and the GDF’s Coast Guard and Air Corps.

That site visit deserves scrutiny on its own terms. The MV Barima remains submerged. The salvage tender process — which this Guardian has tracked through a no-bid Dutch invitation, a leaked pre-RFP solicitation, and a still-undisclosed Expression of Interest process — has not produced a recovery plan.

So what, precisely, can a visit to open water above a wreck that has not been raised actually yield?

Absent a public accounting of what evidence was gathered at a site where the vessel itself is inaccessible, a “site visit” risks becoming exactly what it looks like: a documented activity that signals motion without producing the one thing that would matter — the vessel, intact, examined, and its condition placed beyond speculation. 

Guyanese are entitled to ask what was actually gathered, and the Commission should say so plainly rather than let a visit to the surface stand in for progress on the wreck itself

A president who devotes a public address to lecturing a rival about exploiting tragedy might first account for why his own administration has left the salvage question unresolved for this long, and why the body meant to establish the truth is still, five weeks in, without a hearing date. Berating someone else’s conduct while your own accountability machinery moves this slowly is not moral clarity. It is misdirection — and it asks the public to watch the speedboat instead of the standing water where the actual evidence sits.

What the room actually looked like. Set the words aside and look at the photographs from that same evening. Cabinet ministers and officials are pictured smiling, posing arm-in-arm, visibly enjoying the occasion. In the same frames, rows of Indigenous attendees — many in traditional dress for the heritage celebration  sit still and composed. A country seven weeks removed from a disaster that overwhelmingly claimed Indigenous lives does not need to be told how to feel; the contrast is already sitting in the photographs of its own president’s event. If Ali were as attentive to Indigenous grief as his speech claimed to be, that contrast should have troubled him more than Mohamed’s speedboat.

The core charge. A president used the one platform built to center Indigenous people to instead score a point against his rival;  reframing sustained advocacy as opportunism, weaponizing a still-open wound, in front of an audience gathered to be honored, not used as a backdrop.

That is political one-upmanship conducted in the presence of people still burying their dead, and it reveals more about this government’s priorities than about Mohamed’s.

Guyanese can hold skepticism toward any politician’s motives, Mohamed’s included, while seeing clearly what happened on September 1: a government that used its own citizens’ grief as a stage, while its own investigation into their deaths sits five weeks past its swearing-in with no hearing date, no salvage plan, and now a site visit whose evidentiary yield remains unexplained.

The Power of Possible 

Episode 2: Your First Financial Doorway

SPECIAL FEATURE BY: Staff Writer – September 2026

Getting a first job is a major step. But receiving a paycheck is only the beginning.

The next question is: where does that money go?

For many young people, the answer is simple: cash. It may be kept at home, carried in a wallet, given to a relative for safekeeping, or spent quickly because there is no easy or trusted way to save it.

A bank account changes that. It is more than a place to store money. It can be the first doorway into the formal financial system—the system that allows people to save securely, receive payments, make transfers, build a financial record and eventually qualify for services such as loans, insurance or business support.

But not every young person reaches that doorway easily.

Why a Bank Account Matters

A bank account can help you:

⇒ Keep money safer than storing it at home.

⇒ Receive salary payments directly and track what comes in.

⇒ Separate savings from everyday spending.

⇒ Pay bills, transfer money and make digital payments.

⇒ Build a record that may help when applying for a loan, rental, visa, scholarship or business service.

⇒ Reduce the risk of losing cash through theft, accidents or impulse spending.

Having an account does not automatically make someone financially secure. An empty account is still an account. But access matters because it gives a person more options when income begins to grow.

For a first-time earner, the goal is not to have a large balance immediately. The goal is to develop the habit of knowing where your money goes and keeping some control over it.

Opening an Account Is a Start

Young people should not wait until they are earning “big money” to open an account.

If you are working, freelancing, selling a service, receiving remittances or building a small side business, an account can help you separate personal money from business money and create a clearer picture of your finances.

Before opening one, ask the bank or financial institution:

⇒ What identification and proof of address do I need?

⇒ Is there a minimum opening deposit or minimum monthly balance?

⇒ Are there monthly fees, withdrawal fees or card-replacement charges?

⇒ Can I use online or mobile banking?

⇒ How much does it cost to transfer money?

⇒ What happens if my account remains inactive?

⇒ Is there a savings product suited to students, young workers or small entrepreneurs?

Read the terms before signing. If something is unclear, ask. A financial service provider should be able to explain its products in plain language.

Saving Is Not About Being Rich

One of the biggest myths about saving is that it is only for people with plenty of money.

Saving is first a habit, not a salary level.

Even a small amount set aside regularly can create breathing room. It can cover phone credit for a job interview, transport to work, a school expense, an emergency medical need or a small tool required for a side hustle.

For example, if someone saves G$1,000each week, they could have about G $52,000after a year. That may not solve every problem, but it can prevent a small crisis from becoming an expensive debt.

Start with an amount that is realistic. It may be G $5000 – G $10,000 or whatever fits after essential expenses. The important thing is consistency.

Cash, Cards and Digital Payments

Digital payments are becoming more common. They can make it easier to receive money, pay for goods and services, send support to relatives and manage a small business.

But convenience also brings risk.

Never share your personal identification number, password, one-time verification code or banking login with anyone—not a friend, not a seller and not someone claiming to be from a bank. A legitimate bank will not ask you to send your password or verification code through a message.

Be careful with unfamiliar links, urgent messages and social-media offers that sound too good to be true. Fraudsters often use pressure: “Act now,” “Your account will be closed,” or “You have won money.” Pause, verify through an official contact number or visit the institution directly.

Digital financial tools can support independence. But they work best when users understand both the convenience and the responsibility.

Financial Inclusion Means More Than an Account

Financial inclusion means that ordinary people can safely use useful and affordable financial services.

That includes more than banks. It can include credit unions, mobile-payment systems, insurance providers, remittance services and, in time, financing programmes designed to support training, housing, agriculture, small businesses and new ideas.

As Guyana considers new institutions and avenues for development finance, including a Development Bank, financial inclusion will matter even more. Young people cannot benefit from an opportunity they do not understand, cannot access or cannot afford to use.

A good financial system should not only serve people who already have assets, connections and established businesses. It should also help a young person with a sound idea, useful skills and a willingness to work take a credible next step.

Your First Financial Checklist

Before your first paycheck—or as soon as you receive one—try to do these five things:

1. Open a suitable bank or credit-union account and understand all fees and requirements.
2. Track what comes in and what goes out for one month.
3. Set aside a small emergency amount, even if it begins with only a few hundred dollars.
4. Learn how to use digital banking safely and protect your account information.
5. Keep records of income, payments and savings, especially if you earn from a small business or side job.

Financial literacy is not about pretending every young person starts from the same place. Some will have family support, stable work and access to banking. Others will be searching for work, managing irregular income or trying to get by in cash.

But every young person deserves the knowledge to recognise an opportunity, ask smart questions and avoid a costly mistake.

The purpose of a bank account is not simply to hold money. It is to help you build choices.

LEARN MORE: https://youtu.be/q5JWp47z4bY?si=lb4pLxSF3Poe_zVu 

In Episode 3, we will explore  one of the most important choices of all: how to use credit wisely—understanding loans, interest, repayment and the difference between borrowing to build and borrowing just to survive.