‘Fear stalks the land’  …public safety in Guyana worrying

Sep 04, 2022 News

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…billions spending on security sector with little results – Glenn Lall

Kaieteur News – Over the years successive Governments have spent billions of dollars in the security sector, but Guyanese are still not safe in their homes and on the streets, Kaieteur News Publisher and businessman, Glenn Lall has said.

Lall over the past two weeks have been scrutinising public sector expenditures particularly in the area of healthcare. This is against the background of an Inter-American Development Bank report that condemned the sorry state of public health facilities here. However, during his last Wednesday night’s radio programme, Lall, zeroed in on the security sector here, noting that billions are being spent yearly, but there is little to show for it.“Crime has not decreased…we are not sleeping better when the night comes, we are not free to walk the streets anywhere without watching over your backs,” Mr. Lall noted.

In the 2022 national budget the Irfaan Ali Administration allocated the sum of $47.9 billion to the security sector, which it said would ensure the preservation of law and order at all levels in society. This sum the Government had said would enable widespread connection of CCTV cameras and equipping of police ranks with satellite phones and body cameras. In 2021 the Government had allocated the sum of $22 billion of which $15.3 billion went to the Guyana Police Force.

In 2015, $21 billion was allocated, of that amount, a sum of $11.9 billion went to support the operations of the Guyana Police Force, the Guyana Prison Service, Guyana Fire Service, Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit (CANU), while $9.1 billion had been budgeted for the Guyana Defence Force.

In 2016, a further $24.6 billion was allocated, which the APNU+AFC Administration said at the time was for the development and modernisation of the security sector. In 2017 the allocation was $29.1B.  In 2018 it moved to $30.7Billion and 2019 $35.6 billion.

“If we don’t have a basic sense of security and safety concerning our lives and the little we have, then we are shadows of ourselves. Without security we are like people living with a dreaded disease, fearful of what might come next, the next symptoms, and the next spell,” Lall told listeners to his radio progrmme ‘The Glenn Lall Show.’

Crime situation

According to the independent organisation, World Population Review, Guyana has the eighth-highest crime rate worldwide of 68.74, and a murder rate of about four times higher than that of the United States. The organisation says despite a rigorous licensing requirement to own firearms, the use of weapons by criminals is common. Domestic violence happens regularly in Guyana, as the enforcement of domestic violence laws is weak. Armed robberies occur frequently as well, especially in Georgetown. Additionally, tourists are often the victims of hotel break-ins, robberies, and assaults.

“Without a sense of safety and security, you can’t even go to the bank and do a simple transaction without fear, then how are we living?  If we can’t collect our week’s pay or month’s pay and go to the store without being anxious, then what kind of life is that?  If we can’t go to the market to buy some bora, pumpkin without having to keep looking over our shoulders, then how do we begin to talk about the quality of life? These are the basic needs in life, like rice and flour,” Mr. Lall stressed.  He said public safety is very crucial in every society, noting that Guyana is the biggest and brightest place in the world today with this oil find, “If we don’t have security from bandits roaming the streets, stores, banks, and markets, then how are we going to deal with the thousands of foreign investors, business people, workers and their families that are coming here to make money?  Are we going to have a separate area for those foreigners?”

Mr. Lall said that not a single citizen in any country should have to ask their Government for security and protection. “That should be the foundation of all Governments and any Government who cannot deliver that to its citizens should not be in power. Apart from selling out and giving away our rich resources and land for’ next-to-nothing’, these corrupt Politicians have been spending billions upon billions as year go year come…yet the suffering people have to go through in this country, that you don’t know of, because they don’t tell you – I am fed up talking about the police stations, fire stations, prisons and police outposts across this country.”

Lall said like the Ministry of Health that is spending billions to renovate and upgrade the hospitals that do not have the most basic modern-day machines to save lives and that cost little or nothing – “the Police Force is the same thing.  They are also spending billions to renovate and upgrade buildings, and the most important pieces of equipment that are so badly needed today to help them tackle and solve the escalating crime situation that is happening in this country, they don’t have.”

 Car Jackings   

Touching on some of the daily crimes being committed in the country, Lall referenced that last month the criminals hijacked 25 vehicles. “That is what was reported…we don’t know what wasn’t reported. Gun robberies is all over, stick up, take away whatever, down to snatching plastic bags with bread from your hands is now a norm in many parts of this country.”

“Citizens you guys have to get accustomed to such activities because nothing will change come 2023 and billions more will disappear out of the coffers again. Then they (Government) will continue to sing the same song, how they investing billions to improve the fight against the crime situation to give you peace and proper sleep at nights.”

Expenditures on Police Stations

To underscore his point, Mr. Lall alluded to the Ruimveldt Police Station, which is being constructed at the cost of $60M, Nandy Park Fire Station, which he described as a small flat building with a shed costing $37M. “Then they set aside $38B this year to spend in the security sector and the country is year after year still lacking modern day technology to fight crime,” Lall lamented. He also referenced another $2.1B earmarked to construct the Lusignan and Mazaruni Prisons, noting that the money could build two six-storey prisons “where no one can escape unless the prison warders deliberately open the gates and let them out. But come next year another $2.1B will disappear again in the same merry-go-round, singing the same song – renovations and remodelling. Construction of anything – building, renovating, remodelling in the passageway, the opening, the gateway, the entry way for wholesale thievery in this country by Government…”

Mr. Lall said it is very difficult to accept, hard to swallow and even talk about the lack of basic technology that the world offers to eliminate crime that Guyana does not have. “I walked in the streets of Harare, Accra, Nairobi and Johannesburg with all my jewellery on and those are places where tourists are advised not to travel and to take extreme caution when moving around, in Guyana you can’t even walk around with a fine chain  looking like gold – it gone. This type of crime is happening in this country, in this 21st century, with all the billions we have been throwing away and don’t have the latest crime fighting technology. Phones, computers and cameras are part of today’s technology that is being used across the world to solve criminal activities of all kinds, but not here in Guyana – No, that’s not important for these corrupt politicians to put in place.  Because when their friends and comrades get caught they can’t delete the records easily – is not paper and pencils that can rub out and change, the files can’t just disappear out the systems, anybody who delete anything you can know.  But they don’t want things like that, because they themselves might end up going to prison,” Mr. Lall told his audience.

Lack of Computers  

Security experts have argued that advancement in the field of Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) changes not only our society but also crime. They said ICT opens more opportunities for crime and draws people into committing crime, leading to an unprecedented growth in the crime rate. However, it has also been applied to criminal justice, with crime fighters increasingly using the ICTs to control crime and gain efficiency in their policing efforts to service the community. This has led to more effective police work.

Against this background, Mr. Lall questioned the lack of adequate investments in this area of the Guyana security sector. “Can you believe Guyanese, that all this money, the billions being spent through the Ministry of Home Affairs for all these years under Khemraj Ramjattan and now Robeson Benn, the Guyana Police Force still does not have a proper computerised system that can identify, monitor, and track criminals in this country? With less than the US$40M out of the US$140M in the 2022 budget, you can install a computerised system in almost every police station across this country that can monitor and track criminals across this land. That system would be able to identify and tell you everything about an individual when they are arrested, whether they got a driver’s license, a gun license, how many times they were arrested, what they were arrested for, if they were charged, and what becomes of the case, if they ever went to prison and how long they spend in prison, where they living and much more – that is the type of computerised system I am talking about that can be installed in this country in a jiffy – with just a few computers in each police station with the software and internet service – Guyana doesn’t have.”

Lall said too that there is another set of computers that can track, tap and locate phones that are being used all over to solve crimes and monitor criminals. “Roger Khan had one back in the days, but it was seized, I am told the Guyana Police Force using it only when they want certain crimes to be solved. And if they don’t want to solve a crime because of the dollars behind it, then they don’t have such a computer system in the force. But let me say this, five of those computers’ cost less than one of the fire station they said they building around the country. Both computer systems I talked about for the police stations and the one for phone tracking and tapping, would not cost Guyana US$20M,” Lall stated.

CCTV Cameras  

Lall also advocated for the installation of more Closed Circuit Television Systems (CCTV), saying this type of technology will help Guyanese sleep properly at nights, drive the roads and walk the streets without fear. “Guyanese another US$20M can install the most modernised camera system in all the cities this country has, that thief man will be afraid to even show their faces on the streets of our cities, much less snatch or hijack people’s vehicles. Computers, phones, cameras – today’s technology – that cost little or nothing, our leaders do not see it fit to purchase and set up in order to protect the Guyanese people. Instead, they went and borrow US$190M to build a bush road for snakes and animals to use, but would not borrow US$40M to secure everyone of us. They would borrow US$160M and take US$48M to renovate and upgrade three hospitals, when that money can give you three brand new hospitals. They said part of the US$160M will be used to put in a tracking system to monitor the drugs moving from the warehouses to the hospitals, but they can’t use US$40M to computerise and put in cameras that can track the criminals and eliminate crime.”

He passionately added: “The US$600M of the oil money they took out from the overseas bank account and throw in this year’s budget, US$40M out of that US$600M can put in cameras in all the cities, computers in all the police stations and help you buy the software to track and keep records of the criminals and, if you take a little bit more from the US$600M you can hire a special team from the US to come, set up the system and train our officers how to use it so that they can manage the crime situation which can disappear overnight,” Lall said.

Lall predicts that the US$600M oil money will disappear in 2022 and the crime will get worse in 2023.

 

 

 

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