Govt. seem not to care about the welfare of its citizens

May 24, 2010 Letters

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Dear Editor,

In Guyana we accept anything that is said to us, because we are pruned to do so. The government of the day is so corrupt that they seem not to care about the well-being of its citizens. Georgetown for instance has so many persons working at MCC to do remedial works to any, and every part of the city yet the conditions that abound us is most deplorable, that we as the tax-payers have to endure.

Georgetown was once the garden city now it is the garbage city. The most cleaners work through MCC, and are working in the city area; nevertheless, the city is never clean. The Mayor may be concerned but the government is not. We need to stop this game blaming thing with the two major parties in this country and look at the interest of the people. Guyana is such a small country yet still we cannot get it right. For too long we have accepted this deplorable situations. Only when we have an influx of foreigners then we begin to throw the spiders under the carpet. Come on people we need to rectify this problem for a country that is so small, things should have been more progressive for us.

The police in this country are so misguided that it takes them 4-5 sometimes 6 years to solve a criminal matter, allowing an accused person to be languishing in prison for an unreasonable period of time. Their investigation is the big stick method, the police don’t use their investigative experiences to solve matters; they use violence (extra judicial killings, torture of kids, slamming of testicles in drawers, all sorts of improvised methods of getting what they perceive to be the truth from an assumed guilty person.)

Come on Guyanese are we going to allow our destiny to be abused by this so call regime of Bharrat. Let’s look at what has happened to this small society of citizenry.

None of the escapees of the 2002 jail break were ever brought to justice to answer for all those charges levied against them. The only justice was the one the police know. Why are we doing this to ourselves.

Could the Home-Affairs Minister and the Commissioner of Police answer the following questions:

Where is the accused persons for the Satyadeo Sawh ‘s murder. Where will the investigation go from here. What will happen to the Leander murder in prison, will anyone be charged. Who will compensate the family of this assumed criminal. Can you say to me Clement how is it that you seem to talk so much. You said the other day that the lock-ups cannot be a five-star hotel (with the little that the tax-payers provide for the inmates, most of it is siphoned out by some of the prison officers so not much is left of the ration. Are you investigating this and other daily abuse of inmates by officers

Are you looking at the conditions the inmates have to sleep in?

If we are talking about changing our system from penal to correctional then we need to change the whole system. Look around the world and see what conditions those people provide for inmates and look at the ratio of escapes. If we improve on our conditions we will have less stress with our penal institutions. Inmates need to be treated better. The inmates labour on outdoor parties for a pittance and still the administration takes $300.00 out of $500.00 dollars, could this be right, aren’t we lacking at rehabilitation. When we do that to inmates, if an man serves 7 years, he should be able to save all his money to assist his relatives, yet when you take most of it with the cost of living that we are experiencing, then he will become a recidivists (continued offender), because he will say to himself that his kids and wife will have to survive so I’ll have to do what I have to do. There’s so much that we need to look at. The government should realise that the people voted you there and you are the servants of the people not the other way around. Come on Mr. President make an impact on yourself for the good of your people, you are not a bad guy the persons that work for you will tarnish you.

I support the call that the United Kingdom and Canada did, hopefully the USA will join soon and I hope that changes will avail.

The human rights body should also visit the prisons and lock-ups around the country and see what we are faced with. Over 1100 prisoners are at Camp Street Facility, are we mad. People for too long we have accepted these conditions in silence, lets come out and support better conditions because we have worked assiduously to achieve it. I am very supportive of the article that was carried in your editorial by Lincoln Lewls (Wednesday May 19, 2010), “people must maintain their rights and freedom”.

If we cannot get change now then there will only be void promises at elections time. Politicians should follow the Obama Administration.

P. Tango

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