Crime pervades Guyana at an unprecedented level

Oct 24, 2008 Letters

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Dear Editor,
Some of the most dominant headlines in the local daily newspapers for the month of October 2008 include the following;
“Hooligans invade inter-school sports, students robbed at knife-point”. This incident took place on Friday 10 October, and according to teachers the perpetrators were teenagers and youngsters in their early 20s.
“Bandits attack Chinese restaurant”, happened on Saturday October 11, at Better Hope E.C.D. The bandits escaped with $400,000.
“Would be burglar in hospital under police guard after sound thrashing” also happened on October 11.
Then the next day Esso Gas Station on Regent Street was robbed and the headline read, “Bandits flee patrol after robbing Esso on Regent Street”.
On October 12 came the brutal slaying of a young woman, Alicia Foster. The newspaper caption was “Woman gunned down in front of her Kitty residence”.
On Monday October 13, “Carjackers strike at Diamond”.
On Tuesday October 14, robbers took 6 million in cash and jewellery from a Tuschen family. The headline read “Gunmen storm Tuschen Grocery…” On the said day a taxi driver was hijacked on Busbee Dam.
Another Diamond tragedy, headline “Cry of Uncle Peppers coming save woman’s life during attack”, occurred on Wednesday October 15. The victim was Satwatantie Rampersaud. The day after headline read, “Gunmen snatch $3 million on Charlotte Street”, woman just left bank.
Day 16. Navindra Nauth Singh of Tuschen, the victim, headline “Gang beats, robs Tuschen man”. Monday 20th the Meadowbrook attack caption; “Gunman shot dead, another wounded”. On that same fateful Monday, 68-year-old Budhai of Conservancy Dam met her gruesome death, her story “Elderly woman dies during robbery”.
October 22, we read “Gunmen rob another East Bank minibus”. A tearful passenger and victim, Julian Smith, reiterated that the criminals were very young, even younger than his children.
I am aware that I missed quite a few incidents, and the month has not ended, but these are the current realities of our time. We can do the math and calculate the rate at which crime is taking place in Guyana. This month should be a wake up call to all Guyanese. Crime pervades Guyana at an unprecedented level, and all this time the government continues to ignore the emotional, psychological and economic burden this situation is causing Guyanese by failing to deal with the problem frontally.
Their refusal to address the root causes of this phenomenon leaves every Guyanese to the mercy of the criminals.
The government’s failure to acknowledge that this problem is deeply related to the poor economic state of the country is not only nonsensical but demonstrates its inability to objectively analyse and deal with problems affecting the people.
In this crime ravaged state, the government seems to adopt an approach which says that “things will work themselves out”, even as people are attacked, robbed and/or killed mercilessly.
From the reports of the victims, many of the criminals are very young men. The government should thus ask the obvious question, why are these young people taking up guns and making crime a career? I think the honest answer will be that there are no opportunities, jobs are desperately needed.
There has to be a bold and intensive investigation into the phenomenon of heightened criminal activities in the society to determine the real cause of same.
But I believe that because the government shares a different position regarding the root causes of the problem, any such research might not even be contemplated. Very sad!
In a recent teleconference with the Guyanese Diaspora, the Hon. Prime Minister Samuel Hinds, in his response to questions regarding youths and crime, made reference to the effect that young people are committing crime because they are part of a culture that believe in the “get rich or die while trying thinking”. According to him, the issue is all about getting rich quick. His comments left me speechless as I sensed that this is probably the prevailing thinking on the part of the government.
The question then is how can the government strategically take Guyanese out of this crime plight in which we find ourselves, if it adopts this “dumb-founded” rational for the spiraling crime wave.
Heightened criminal activities should not be condoned period, and those guilty of perpetrating criminal acts on citizens should have the full extent of the law meted out to them. But at the same time, those who have the responsibility to ensure the protection of the nation must explore all reasonable avenues to determine the root causes of the problem in order to advance sensible and workable solutions to same.
Another, baseless reason advanced by advocates of the government is that this crime situation should be blamed on single-parent family households. This is utter rubbish. While there is some indication that many of the young people involved in criminal activities might be products of such households, they fail to acknowledge the economic realities of such families, especially in a situation of a stagnant economy, which is failing to multiply jobs.
Those of us who study enough Caribbean History will understand the emergence of the single-parent family and its link to a number of realities, including slavery.
I once again call on the government to act swiftly to advance an economic recovery programme to aid in alleviating the frightening criminal situation in the country. With the current state of play investors are not likely to bring resources to a country gripped by crime. So the government must take decisive action to both create employment and provide a reasonably conducive environment to attract the kind of investment that will take up a sizeable portion of the idle labour force.
I do not recall in the last 16 years when Guyana was able to attract investments as massive as OMAI Gold Mines and BARAMA.
Say what you want about Desmond Hoyte. He had a grand economic plan and a zero tolerance policy on crime.
Guyanese were led to believe that with the killing of the notorious duo ‘Fine Man’ and ‘Skinny’ that crime will subside, but in fact we seem to be reaping the harvest of their crop with these daily murders and unwarranted attacks.
It is time the government gets serious and stop playing “petty politics” with crime while Guyanese families mourn the deaths of loved ones, and face brutal attacks and robbery almost daily.

Lurlene Nestor

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