Indira Zalini Anandjit …“I don’t have plans to retire anytime soon…I’m here to serve.”
INDIRA Zalini Anandjit has been serving as the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Legal Affairs ever since July 2012, having held several different posts in the past at various organisations. And despite being in the world of work for some 38 years, she is not willing to quit anytime soon.
Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Legal Affairs Indira Zalini Anandjit.
At the age of 16, she started as a needle work teacher at the Annandale Secondary School. Some 20 years later, she gained employment with the Guyana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) and later moved on to Demerara Distillers Limited (DDL).
Ms. Anandjit, 54, later worked with the Tourism and Hospitality Association of Guyana (THAG), Iwokrama, and the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM).
“I don’t have plans to retire anytime soon. I’m enjoying myself. I’ve enjoyed every bit of my jobs. As long as the government would have me, I’m here to serve. There were so many opportunities for me to go and work abroad but I was never keen on that. I love my country because I am a patriotic Guyanese,” she related in an interview with this paper at her office.
Ms Anandjit (first, right) with her siblings
Raised at Annandale on the East Coast Demerara, Ms. Anandjit attended the primary and secondary schools in that village. Like her father, she taught at the secondary school from 1976 to 1996 and attended the Lilian Dewar College of Education for training. She later majored in education at the University of Guyana.
Ms. Anandjit believes that her teaching days served as a springboard for where she is today. She always enjoyed public speaking and debating and so while being employed at GBC, she began doing on air programmes. During her stint at THAG, she said good partnerships with the government were formed. “I enjoyed my tourism days a lot. It allowed me to interact with a lot of people and to see many places.”
Disciplined Teacher
Ms. Anandjit expressed disappointment at what is happening in many schools today. “The focus is so much on passing exams but not teaching children for life. In our days, there were things beyond passing exams. They must know about their environment, topical issues, international news, relationships, etc. So
Proud of her son, Sydartha and daughter, Renuka
there was a host of things that we used to teach our children. We wanted to prepare them for life.”
Being a guidance counselor in school also helped her achieve these goals in that she took the opportunity to talk with the students.
“I can’t say with any degree of certainty how much of this is being done today. In any school there will be troubled children but you have to talk to them. I wanted to know their families, their background. It helped me develop relationships with my children and it served me well. I was a disciplined teacher and it reflected in the kind of results I got from my children,” she related.
Humility
Ms Anandjit said she believes that if one can remain humble regardless of where they are in life, they will truly become successful. “I consider myself a very humble person,” she pointed out.
“I believe that if you truly want to achieve something, only you can decide how far you want to go and only you can decide how happy you want to be. In fact, my problems have served to make me a stronger person.
Ms Anandjit has no regrets in her life so far and is quite proud of her son, Sydartha and daughter, Renuka.
