Much of this country’s vast hinterland is veritable terra incognita to the administration. The state enforces the law in only selected islands of administrative activity, human settlement and extractive industry west of the Essequibo River. In the sea of bush away from those spots, the administration is sorely challenged to guarantee the security of its citizens and the safety of their property.
A case in point is the recent ambush of a Mekdeci Mining Company vehicle by a gang of bandits – in which two security guards were killed in broad daylight in the vicinity of the Sheribana Bridge on the Essequibo River. It was all too easy for the bandits to lie in wait in the bush along the dreary, deserted, dusty road and, in a few minutes, kill, rob and vanish without a trace. The hijacked vehicle was abandoned a couple of kilometres away and the gang escaped by river. The pro forma police response of setting up roadblocks, therefore, was a waste of time.
It was only to be expected that roving gangs of bandits would take advantage of the administration’s lack of interest in the hinterland and the law enforcement agencies’ lack of resources to wreak havoc on isolated settlements. The mining industry with its large foreign population, widely dispersed camps and rich pickings is regarded as a ‘soft’ target. Miners travelling along the solitary, unsurfaced roadways have increasingly become the quarries of opportunistic bandits.
The casebook of hinterland crime is copious and the murderous Sheribana attack was only the worst of the lot. In December 2005, bandits robbed a group of miners and diamond buyers of a quantity of gold, diamonds and cash worth over $40M at Barlow Landing in the Mazaruni. In March 2006, bandits attacked and robbed 15 miners travelling in two buses on the Linden-Lethem roadway.
The next month, in April 2006, bandits robbed a diamond and gold dealer at Oranapai Landing in the Mazaruni. The same month, bandits shot one person and robbed several others at gunpoint after a bus with 41 persons had broken down near to Mabura on the same Linden-Lethem roadway. And so the story goes in the wild, western hinterland.
As usual, in this country, complaints have to be made at the highest level for meaningful action to be taken. As long ago as January 2006, President Bharrat Jagdeo, accompanied by then Minister of Home Affairs Ms Gail Teixeira and Commissioner of Police Winston Felix, held a ‘closed-door’ meeting with the president of the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association Alfro Alphonso and vice-president Norman McLean, to discuss hinterland security. The Guyana Association of Private Security Organisations, which represents several of the largest security companies, also made recommendations to solve the hinterland security problem. The results of their entreaties to the administration are plain to see. Not much has been done to staunch the rash of robberies, murders, ambushes and violent attacks against the mining communities.
The police force has shown that it is not trained, equipped, organised or inclined to deal with this new type of jungle warfare. Worst of all its ‘E’ and ‘F’ divisions which are responsible for over 163,000 km
