Cops granted 75 percent budget boost to handle increase in bodies

May 27, 2019 News

Of the $7.9B granted to government in the Supplementary Appropriation Bill 2019, the Ministry of Public Security sought only one supplement of $48M. That is to meet payments for handling of corpses.
Minister Khemraj Ramjattan, in his bid for the increase at the National Assembly, said that there has been an “increase in the number of handling and transporting of dead bodies over the years” and that this begs funds from the Consolidated Fund.
He has said recently that claims by the political opposition of an increase in violent crime are spurious, and that the police have been doing a commendable job of keeping the crime rate low. That excludes traffic related incidents.
But Ramjattan did not provide a disaggregation of incidents responsible for that increase in bodies.
In the 2019 Budget, the Guyana Police Force was allocated $64M to pay for handling of the dead. This additional $48M supplement represents a 75 percent increase in that allocation. It was approved by the National Assembly last Thursday. According to documents presented in the National Assembly for during debates for Budget 2019, the allocations for the handling of bodies were $61M and $63M for Budgets 2017 and 2018.

Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan

Ramjattan added that the supplement request also took into account that there has been some amount of “inherent indebtedness” from the previous administration’s failure to complete payments to funeral homes, which assist in the handling of bodies. He noted that some debts go as far back as 2012, and that some of the supplement will be used to fulfill the debt.
It is difficult to forecast, he said, just how many bodies there are per year. Even so, when it comes to homicides, Ramjattan said that the majority of those are a result of interpersonal violence, an issue he thinks the police are incapable of mitigating.
But he has fought back against criticism against his Ministry set by a perceived increase in violent crime.
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.”
The issue, he had noted, is not that the police aren’t catching the criminals; the issue is that the police do not have the “clinical edge” to tackle the sources of violent crime, Ramjattan said.
In this regard, he said that the government expects to have a better revenue stream – come first oil – to attract people with stronger academic backgrounds to the Guyana Police Service.
Presently, the Justice Education Society, which creates programmes and resources that improve legal capability and increase access to justice, has been working to “professionalise” ranks.