Gov’t moving to start post-Cabinet briefings – Ali

President Irfaan Ali on Wednesday said that the government is currently putting a system in place to facilitate the start of post-Cabinet briefings.

During a press conference held at State House, Ali noted that the pandemic has had a major impact on the way everyone operated pre-pandemic and went on to assure that the matter of post-Cabinet briefings is currently being dealt with.

He said that once a system is in place, these briefings will become frequent.

Although the People’s Progressive Party/Civic government has been in office for almost nine months, during which time there has been no postcabinet press briefing.

In January, President of the Guyana Press Association Nazima Raghubir said that the failure to hold post-Cabinet press briefings was an unacceptable continuation of a precedent set by the previous administration.

“The government is using COVID-19 to avoid press engagements and they are using a precedent set by the Granger administration to respond or grant interviews to select media houses. They are also engaging with social media commentators rather than media houses just as Mr Granger and others preferred to speak to some social media commentators,” Raghubir had stated.

She had revealed that the GPA had raised the matter with government via Minister with responsibility for Public Affairs Kwame McCoy since December but received no response.

Ali was also asked about the lack of post-Cabinet briefings in December and at the time he said that the lack of formal briefings had not affected the public’s access to information on his administration decision making. “I think the one thing we have doing is keeping in constant touch with the people. All aspects of all discussion from Cabinet has been communicated to the people,” he had said.