Aug 26, 2026 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

(Kaieteur News) – The night of Saturday, July 18, 2026 and the early hours of the agonising Sunday that followed are now dates etched into the memory and history of Guyanese. The first hours brought the first pieces of news of a tragedy about which none had a clue that it was really one. And as big as it eventually turned out to be. In the rush of events since that poignant July 18, there is so much pain that doesn’t ease. So many questions for which no one can offer the type of convincing answers needed at this time. From several indicators, I gather that the MV Barima disaster is already water under the bridge. Notwithstanding about 100 lives lost, and so much responsibility for this tragedy still sidestepped from top to bottom, the emphasis now is about moving on, and about separating from a time of terrible loss of life.

From one section of official Guyana, there is the sense that the less said about the MV Barima tragedy, the better. Unsaid publicly is ‘nothing can bring them back.’ I will say what I said publicly more than once: negligence and arrogance contributed in so small way to the death of that boat and the departure of unknown scores of lives. Guyanese have lost partners. Families have lost mothers, or fathers, or children. Communities have lost neighbours. A country is in splinters. Still, there is a level of nonchalance, perhaps, even contempt for the dead [and the living], at different levels of official Guyana.