Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee yesterday signed a cooperation agreement with the Organisation of American States (OAS), signalling that body’s support in helping the country achieve its objective of implementing public security, the Government Information Agency (GINA) reported.
The agreement is one of the OAS projects funded by the Canadian Government to assist Caribbean countries in strengthening, establishing and implementing policies to fight crime and violence, GINA said.
Minister Rohee stated that this project is a realisation of a 2008 Mexico meeting which saw the Heads of Security bodies across the region coming together.
Meanwhile, the agreement will complement the Crime and Social Observatory Unit in capacity building and the Ministry of Home Affairs in fulfilling its mandates.
This unit has as its members the Ministries of Education, Health, Local Government and Home Affairs, the Director of Public Prosecutions, Private Sector, Guyana Police Force, and the Georgetown Public Hospital Corporation.
The Crime and Social Observatory Unit makes assessments on public perception of safety, the quality of policing, addresses, collects and analyzes data from crime statistics and standardizes data.
The unit is used as a proactive tool to assess the areas of training and institutional strengthening needed within the law enforcement agencies, GINA ex-plained.
According to Rohee, there is no doubt that this project will help in the capacity building of the ministry and will complement other programmes such as the citizen security programme in fulfilling its mandate.
OAS Country Representative Dennis Moses stated that the project will see the spreading of security related information, which will help to strengthen law enforcement agencies both at the national and regional levels.
