Priya Devi Manickchand is the Minister of Education in Guyana where she has oversight of the country’s education sector. She was first elected to Parliament in 2006 with the portfolio of Minister of Human Services and Social Security. There, she was committed to addressing the scourge of violence against women and children. Toward this end, she published a National Policy on Domestic Violence and piloted laws in the Parliament relating to the care, development and protection of children. She initiated a countrywide campaign to stamp out sexual violence. That campaign realized a revolutionary Sex Offences Law that was tabled by her and passed by the Parliament. She established her country’s only Childcare and Protection Agency. She also decentralized Legal Aid services from the capital city and expanded it to six of Guyana’s 10 regions, making access to justice for Guyana’s vulnerable a reality. Through her collaboration with the private sector, the Women of Worth economic initiative was established; a loan program that provides low interest and collateral-free loans to single-parent women from lower-income brackets who wish to start up or expand their businesses. In 2014, she was conferred with an Honorary Doctorate from the Lesley University in Boston Massachusetts, United States of America. In 2011 and 2020 she was re-elected to Parliament and became the country’s sixteenth and nineteenth Minister of Education, respectively. She is also an Attorney-at-law, married to a civil engineer and has two children.
