Govt. wants to increase qualifications to join police force

May 06, 2019 News

By Kemol King

There have been efforts to increase the capacity of police officers to provide a high quality of service to the Guyanese public. According to Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan, work is being done to “professionalise” current ranks.
He said that the police have been in talks with experts from the Justice Education Society, a Canadian institution, which creates programmes and resources that improve legal capability and increase access to justice. The Minister said that the force is working to “increase the capacity and capability of each and every detective.”
Ramjattan was keen to note that, though professional training is productive, it would be much more beneficial for ranks to have a firm background in academia. He said that, “when you start building that academic background of your leadership in the police force, you are going to get a more professional police force that would be faster in its ability to recognise” issues and nip them in the bud.
“We have to get more intelligence about the nature of these communities,” he said. And for that, he believes that the force requires a more academic, “clinical edge”.
A spokesperson for the GPF told Kaieteur News that the current academic requirement to join the Force is five CXC/CSEC subjects. However, that is not regularly upheld. The spokesperson said that a sound secondary education tends to suffice.
Asked whether the government wants to increase the minimum qualifications needed to join the Force, Ramjattan affirmed, and said that the Force must also work on background checks for its recruits.
“We are trying as best as possible to get more university graduates, whether it is with first degrees or master’s degrees into the police force. The police, he said, have to be “made out of better stuff. If you can get 9-10 [CXC/CSEC] subjects, we can bring them in as cadet officers.”
But at present, “we have to live with what we have because people with a higher number of CXCs don’t want to join up because of the salary scales,” Ramjattan said.
The Minister noted that the challenge lies in convincing persons with those qualifications to join the Force because the salaries are meagre. However, he is hoping for a better revenue stream when oil starts pumping, next year.
During a press conference last week, the Minister was also asked about the prevalence of crime and what the police have been doing to mitigate occurrences. He was also asked about the issue of confidence in the police force.
As far as catching the perpetrators, he said that the police are doing a good job and that patrols have increased all across the country.
Ramjattan responded to claims by leader of the Opposition, Bharrat Jagdeo, that Guyana is experiencing a surge in crime, and that people are not confident in the Force.
Ramjattan said, “Sometimes, [crime stories are] emblazoned across the front page of newspapers, giving the impression [that we are], compared to other countries, in a real bad state. It is not really true.”
He said that Guyana lives in a geopolitical space (Caribbean and Latin America), where interpersonal violence and homicide rates are among the highest in the world. People should, the Minister said, appreciate that Guyana is performing relatively well, for a country in this region.
“Countries like Honduras and El Salvador have murder rates that reach over 50 per 100,000. Jamaica, 52 per 100,000. We are probably one of the lowest, at 15 per 100,000.”
He stressed that people don’t appreciate just how much work the police force is currently doing; that people don’t know the “other side of it; what the police force is doing to avoid [the homicide rate] going to the very high rates like we have in other CARICOM and Latin American countries.”
“But we are on to it to the extent of catching them, and doing the patrols to avoid that which could [raise it] from 15 to 20 per 100,000.”
He said that Guyanese should be, in that regard, grateful for what the police are doing.
Even then, he acknowledged that there are shortfalls and hopes that the police can get to the root causes of issues, so that they could prevent crime more than they investigate it.

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Govt. wants to increase qualifications to join police force

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