How incompetent must Ramjattan be before he is relieved of his security portfolio?

Oct 01, 2018 Letters

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Dear Editor,
The video of Public Security Minister, Khemraj Ramjattan taken at his party’s press conference has gone viral on facebook. Anyway why not? It is rare indeed to hear a minister of government admit to his own incompetence. “In my circumstances, I don’t know what better I can do” a clearly frustrated Khemraj Ramjattan admitted to the press.
The security portfolio was given to Ramjattan as part of the AFC Commingsburg Agreement negotiated with the APNU just prior to the 2015 National and Regional Elections. Ramjattan was ably supported for the security portfolio by the self-appointed successor to Dr. Cheddi Jagan, Moses Nagamootoo, another former PPP member with an axe to grind. Nagamootoo had earlier resigned from the PPP because he was not elected presidential candidate of the party to contest the 2011 elections.
From the moment the APNU+AFC got into government, jailing Jagdeo and former PPP/C ministers had been the primary focus of the vindictive Minister of Public Security. With the help of British financial advisor, Dr. Sam Sittlington, Ramjattan refocused the objectives of the Special Organized Crimes Unit -SOCU, an institution that was set up by the former PPP/C government to prosecute those involved in money laundering and terrorist activities, and made it into a political arm of government to exclusively target and witch-hunt former PPP/C ministers and officials.
But it is his obsession with Jagdeo and the PPP that made Khemraj Ramjattan a liability and embarrassment to the men and women in uniform and to the office he holds. The Minister of Public Security has neglected a critical area of his sworn ministerial responsibility – to protect our citizens from the scourge of an escalating crime wave that is taking more lives, causing more serious injuries, raping more vulnerable women, and depriving more Guyanese of their hard-earned money and property.
The $$$ billions that are being wasted on SOCU by this government: Paying an Attorney General and his special foreign prosecutors who have failed miserably to win a single conviction in court against PPP officials, would have been best utilized by the Guyana Police Force and the Guyana Prison Service to improve their capabilities. But SOCU is not the only victim of the incompetent Minister of Public Security, Ramjattan is making the Police and Prison Services look like failures too.
On March 3rd 2016, seventeen (17) inmates were burnt to death in the Camp Street Prison, and eleven (11) others were injured in what was then described as the worst prison riot in memory.
Then on Sunday, July 9, 2017, a mere sixteen (16) months later, another disaster struck. This time, the Camp Street Prison was burnt to the ground. And during the mayhem, one prison officer was killed and 20 inmates injured.
Eight notorious, hard-core criminals escaped. Two of whom are still on the run.
Then, just when it seemed that things could not get any worse, on July 24, 2017, a mere 2 weeks after the inferno that destroyed the Camp Street Jail, 13 more prisoners crawled to freedom through a tunnel they had dug under a fence at the Lusignan Holding Bay.
Then last Monday, October 15, the nation was again horrified with the news that 3 prisoners, one a murder accused, scaled the fence at the Lusignan Prison and escaped while the guards slept. Later that day, riot broke out over the “inhumane” conditions the prisoners are forced to endure at that prison.
According to a Kaieteur News Editorial (October 17), “What is also appalling is the fact that a Commission of Inquiry was established by the executive following the 2017 events, but half of the recommendations contained in the final report remain unimplemented, according to well-placed sources. Also the smuggling of contraband, narcotics and other illegal items into the prisons has not declined, but has taken on a shameful if not shocking story line of its own with prison officers themselves being discovered with the booty or facilitating the trafficking of these items.”
I have a lot of respect for Director of Prisons, Gladwin Samuels whom I believe is doing the best with what he has to work with. Unfortunately, he has to bear some responsibility for the continuous overcrowding of our prisons, and the poor conditions under which prisoners are kept. But the buck stops with the Minister of Public Security. I recalled during an inspection of the newly built holdings cells at the Brickdam Police Station by members of the Parliamentary Oversight Committee for the Security Sector, I pointed out to Minister Ramjattan that the concrete cells were much too hot for prisoners as the ventilation did not allow for breeze to pass through, to which he replied, “Yo tink dis is de Marriott?”
June 14, 2009 the then Chairman of the AFC, the Hon. Khemraj Ramjattan, now Minister of Public Security, wrote in the Kaieteur News, “The convention of individual ministerial responsibility fixes blame on a Minister for all failure of policy and administration whether the Minister himself is at fault or not; and, harsh as it may sound, even if the failure resulted from departmental maladministration. A Minister must take praise for successes of his department, and blame for its failures.
Moreover, a Minister is required to provide full and accurate information to Parliament; must behave himself with candor; and, must not mislead Parliament knowingly. This is in addition to not using public resources for his personal purposes. Ministers are expected to be their own conscience… I recollected that a man found himself in the Queen’s bedroom some decades ago. The UK Minister in charge, duly, and with a certain ring of honour and dignity, resigned, because somebody has to be responsible.”

I concur with the statement written above. There is no need for Minister Ramjattan to continue losing sleep over security matters he has proven incapable of, he just needs to take ministerial responsibility for the dangerous escalation in crime; the inhuman conditions that seems to be getting worst in our prisons; the lives of the 17 inmates that were burnt to death in 2016; the prison officer that was killed in 2017; and the more than 20 inmates who suffered injuries during the many riots and prison fires under his watch.
Khemraj Ramjattan needs to take his own advice on individual ministerial responsibility and give way to someone else who can do better to run that ministry. How incompetent must Ramjattan be before he is relieved of his security portfolio?
HARRY GILL
PPP/C Member of Parliament
Member of the Parliamentary Oversight Committee of the Security Sector

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