Georgetown : The Ministry of the Presidency refutes the headline of an article, which was carried in the Thursday, April 14, 2016 edition of the Kaieteur News. The headline, which is at odds with the actual content of the article, reads “Private ‘Jet trip’ was paid for by Chinese Govt. – President Granger.”
As a matter of fact, the words ‘paid for’ were never used by the President. Further, nowhere in the content of the article, nor in the source of the content, which was a recording of an informal interview done by members of the media, who were at the Ministry of the presidency to cover the swearing in of the Advisory Council on the Prerogative of Mercy on Wednesday, does President Granger say that the trip was ‘paid for’ by the Chinese Government.
During the interview, the President was asked whether the Minister of State, Mr. Joseph Harmon has provided an explanation for the picture, which was published in the Kaieteur News’ Sunday Edition, in which he is surrounded by Executive Members of Chinese Logging Company, Bai Shan Lin.
This is the verbatim response provided by the President: “Yes. He has explained it to the Cabinet. He had to visit, as you know the Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China was in China at that time and he had to go to about three of four different cities and the Ambassador arranged the executive transport because of the distance between the cities and the amount of time he had at his disposal. So it was arranged by the Chinese government to enable him to travel to different cities to conduct the business he was there to conduct.”
The Ministry of the Presidency calls for an immediate correction and retraction of this headline and asks that media entities act more responsibly when quoting the President. While the Government of Guyana promotes and stands solidly in support of press freedoms, it is important that the media treat responsibly, their role to provide accurate information to the members of the public.
