GEORGETOWN, Guyana (CMC)—Stabroek News, one of Guyana’s daily newspapers launched in the 1960’s Friday announced that it had taken the “extraordinarily difficult and painful” decision to shut down its operations.

Stabroek News becomes the second media entity in the Caribbean to cease operations in recent weeks, following the NEWSDAY newspaper in Trinidad and Tobago.

In a lengthy statement, Isabelle and Brendan de Caires, the two main shareholders of Stabroek News, said In the past year, the state-run Department of Public Information (DPI) has accrued a debt to this newspaper in excess of GUY$80,000,000 (One Guyana dollar=US$0.004 cents) in unpaid advertisements.

“The debt persists despite repeated private and public entreaties to clear it. This tactic could equally be construed as an attempt to starve this company of its operating fund,” they said.

Further they said, “publishing has always been a precarious undertaking in Guyana and the Caribbean due to the modest size of the potential readership, and to other market constraints. No-one becomes a publisher in Guyana to grow rich.

“While the company has never been driven by a concern about profit, it must function as a business. It is a given that any business needs to continually diversify and adapt and to seek alternative sources of income. We have faced significant obstacles.

“We have repeatedly sought (and been refused) a radio licence. Although we operated a TV subsidiary for a few decades, our main local competitors enjoyed significant privileges. The playing field was not level. The anticipated progression from newspaper to multimedia broadcaster has been impossible,” the two main shareholders said in the statement.