– rules breached; ammunition found in living quarters
In excess of 20 commissioned and non-commissioned officers of the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) now face disciplinary action following the discovery of over 200 live and blank rounds of ammunition, helmets and a training grenade in their living quarters at various army bases across the country.
Chief of Staff of the GDF Commodore Gary Best refused to give the exact number of officers involved, but said the fact that the items were found in the officers’ accommodation was a “clear breach” of the force’s Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs). He also stressed that the force’s intelligence has revealed that there was nothing sinister being planned among the officers, rather, these were instances of officers not following the rules.
The items were found in the quarters of officers based in Camp Ayanganna, Timehri, Soweyo and at the Coastguard base, Ruimveldt. The ammunition found were 7.62 and 9 millimetre, which Best said are the two types of ammunition used by the force. The most senior officer involved is a captain.
According to Best, officers usually have ammunition in their possession for the purposes of shooting during training with their platoons but after the exercise is completed the unused ammunition must be returned to the ammunition depot. He explained that there is also a time span for the officers to declare and hand in the ammunition.
“So more than likely they breached the SOPs and just kept the ammunition in their possession and I would not say here that the ammunitions were kept for any unsavory purpose. It was a clear breach of procedures and the ammunitions were outside of the depot,” Best said.
Asked how he was sure the items were not being kept for any unsavory purpose, Best said, “My intelligence sources tell me that.
“We do constant review, constant checks, constant vetting of our ranks and based on my intelligence sources, like I said no ammunition has gone missing from the Guyana Defence Force, an internal audit revealed that ammunitions were not returned in time and were not accounted for.
“To that extent I have no information to suggest that there is complicity among the persons I mentioned to remove ammunitions from the facilities of the Guyana Defence Force.”
Nevertheless, Best said, the matter is a serious one.
Meanwhile, Commissioner of Police Henry Greene asked about the issue at a press conference he held yesterday, said the matter was reported to him by Best who said he was doing some “internal checks before bringing the matter further up and my last report is that nothing is missing. They found the ammunition. So I don’t see there would be a criminal investigation. It has not been passed to us yet.”
‘In the rooms’
In a terse statement yesterday at Camp Ayangana the head of the GDF said that the items, which were discovered following a report that some ammunition was missing triggering an internal investigation, should have been returned to the stores but were “in the rooms of officers, warrant officers and senior non-commissioned officers.
“This represents a clear breach of regulations and as such strong disciplinary actions will be [taken] against the offending ranks. No guns were discovered, no guns are missing,” Best said.
According to Best, the audit of the stores became necessary after an investigation was launched into a report of missing ammunition at the conclusion of the last force training exercise.
“However, even though the investigation did not find any ammunition missing it did unearth several breaches,” in the SOP, Best said ending his statement.
The hurriedly summoned press conference by the GDF came on the heels of a report in yesterday’s edition of the Kaieteur News, which among other things said some 31 commissioned and non-commissioned officers were under close arrest following the disappearance and subsequent recovery of “pyrotechnics and ammunitions from the GDF armory.” The report had said the items disappeared over a two-month period and this prompted a sting operation coordinated by the GDF intelligence unit and entailed the searching of the officers’ quarters. The report also said that several 9 mm pistols were unearthed.
Asked if he would have called the press conference if the issue was not reported Best countered, “Would you have asked me if it weren’t so?”
Fielding questions from reporters, the GDF head made it clear that there was no conspiracy “but we searched the rooms of a number of officers… to determine whether or not there was full compliance with all our regulations having received a report that ammunition was missing and that there might have been accounting, not only errors, but procedures of mis-accounting of ammunition and not accounting timely and accurately of ammunition. So I caused the rooms of the officers to be searched to ensure that there was compliance.”
While Best said they searched over a dozen officers’ rooms he said he could not say how many were found not “in compliance” but that the number represented about 10 to 15 per cent of the officers’ corps of the army. He refused to disclose the strength of the officer’s corps as according to him it is a “security matter”.
He said the disciplinary action that could be taken against the offending ranks range from court martial to summary dismissal lost of seniority as “there are a range of punishments prescribed under the Defence Act….”
He said he could not be specific about what action would be taken but “certainly strong disciplinary action will be taken.”
He said initially the officers involved were detained but since the investigation was almost over most persons have returned to their jobs.
The officers will be disciplined as soon as the investigation is concluded, Best said, while revealing that the ammunition would have been in the officers’ possession for a short period of time.
Best pointed out that the officers are human beings and that “obviously” there was some breakdown in the supervisory mechanism down the chain of command.
“I am conceding that there was [non-compliance with SOP] and I am also conceding that out intel found it, discovered it, brought it to our attention and we are doing something about it right now,” Best said.
Commodore Best said dealing condignly with the officers will send a strong signal that when officers are using weapons and ammunition they must comply with all the SOPs. He said strong action will “improve the management of the force rather than retard the management of the force.”
And while Best said he has since taken steps to strengthen the SOP he stressed that even before his strengthening the SOPs were very adequate to deal with the storage of ammunition, “but like I said people run systems. The question is that we have to keep working on our personnel, we have to keep working on our people to ensure that they are professional and where they fall short of being professional we have to take action against them, which is what I intend to do.”