The arithmetic of public safety

Dec 12, 2025 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

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(Kaieteur News) – I woke up this week to the astonishing revelation that some, not all, of our police ranks—apparently do not have passes in Maths and English at the CSEC examinations. This came as such a shock that I nearly dropped my cup of morning tea. Fortunately, thanks to my own CSEC pass in Maths, I calculated the trajectory early enough to prevent a disaster.

Naturally, I found myself asking a question that any rational person would ask upon learning this news: How on earth were these persons hired? Because last time I checked—and I do check these things compulsively, in case the requirement has changed during the night—the basic qualification for almost any entry-level job in the public service is having passes including in Maths and English.

You need Maths and English to be a clerk, to be a cashier, to sell SIM cards from a tent on the pavement on Regent Street. But somehow, mysteriously, you do not need them to join the premier law enforcement agency of the nation, which is only responsible for arresting people, taking statements, preparing case files, testifying in court, and other small chores like operating radar guns and calculating the improbable speed of the average Route 45 minibus.

How is this possible? Did someone misplace the rule book? Did the qualifications fall behind a filing cabinet? Were they, perhaps, accidentally shredded and used as confetti at some official celebration of mediocrity? I am not accusing. I am merely speculating, which, I might add, is a cherished right of all citizens who are in the early stages of existential panic.

Because, truly, one must ask: How far does this go? Is this phenomenon confined to the Guyana Police Force, or is there a grand, sweeping, national philosophy that says, “Why let literacy gets in the way of a good government job?” If so, this philosophy ought to be documented. Preferably by someone who can spell “documented.”

Those academically deficient police officers will now have a few years to get their passes. To which I say—including with the authority of someone who failed Technical Drawing twice—shouldn’t they have had those passes before joining an agency that requires them to read and write things that later go before a magistrate?

This is not advanced astrophysics. This is not quantum mechanics. This is basic arithmetic: you cannot have a modern, efficient police force in 2025 if some of its members struggle with the multiplication table or believe that “statement” is rendered as “stayt-ment”.

Now, to be fair, this is not the first-time qualifications have taken a beating in this country. I am reminded of the latter days of the old PNC regime, when the minimum requirements for the public service were quietly lowered like a limbo bar at a drunken wedding. What used to be five subjects—including Maths and English—slowly trickled down to four, then three, then, if rumour is to be believed, eventually to “just show up with a birth certificate and a party card.” It was all done, we were told, to facilitate “inclusion,” which is political language for “we needed to hire some friends and supporters.”

The result was predictable: we ended up with sections of the public service populated by people who could not spell “public service” even if you spotted them the vowels.

But while a poorly staffed ministry may produce delayed letters, missing files, and an inability to find a single functioning stapler in a two-storey building, a poorly staffed police force can produce something far more catastrophic: chaos. Because policing is not guesswork. It requires precision. It requires clarity. It requires, dare I say it, the ability to write a coherent witness statement without sending the prosecutor into cardiac distress.

Imagine a police rank that cannot calculate the speed of a vehicle, estimate distances, add up evidence logs, or spell the location of a crime scene correctly. You cannot build a modern policing institution on numerical improvisation and alphabetic gambling. You cannot tell a young constable, “Go take a statement,” only to have him reply, “Boss, how you spell ‘statement’ again?”

We live in a digital age—an age of data, analytics, forensics, GPS, cybercrime units, crime-mapping software. Modern policing is practically a marriage between law enforcement and mathematics. And yet, here we supposedly have some ranks – how much no one knows for sure – treating basic literacy and numeracy as optional.

The truth is harsh but unavoidable: A modern police force cannot function without every rank being able to count properly and write clearly. To pretend otherwise is to engage in national self-deception.

And so, I propose we treat this moment not as a scandal but as an intervention. A turning point. A national epiphany in which we collectively agree that mediocrity is not an acceptable qualification for public service.

Let us insist—firmly, politely, neurotically—that the people we entrust with our safety should know the difference between a sentence and a fragment, between 30 kilometres per hour and 130, between “there,” “their,” and “they’re,” and between “it’s” and “its”, especially when each one could determine whether a case collapses or a criminal walk free.

Because if we cannot rely on the literacy and numeracy of the people enforcing the law, then what, exactly, can we rely on?

Certainly not my tea, which I am now too nervous to drink.

(The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of this newspaper.)

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• CSEC, English, Maths, Peeping Tom, police ranks, public safety

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