Dear Editor,
The other day, I placed a call to the Ministry of Home Affairs. I just wanted to ask the Minister one question: What was his strategy to re-capture the highly skilled criminals that got away from New Amsterdam’s jail so that we can avoid a repeat of Fine Man and the 2002 crime spree with Shawn Brown?
A woman answered the phone and asked me to call back later since the Minister was in a meeting. I did return the call (long distance mind you) but no one answered.
Mr Rohee of all ministers should focus more on his job rather than engaging in politicking in the newspapers. His track record is worse than pathetic. What is most distressing is that ‘goatism’ has now annexed the national security environment, but the performance to date by Mr Rohee is worse than that of Ms Gail Teixeira. Surely, Mr Rohee’s tenure in office lacks surefootedness, mainly due to incompetence.
Let me offer some advice to the Minister: It is time for him to go, quietly and easy.
On the other hand the Alliance for Change (AFC) has a very serious proposal and strategy to arrest crime in Guyana(see www.voteafc.com for details). Our core focus is to tie crime to new investment. More crime = less investments. New investment = new jobs. So that clearly means high crime = low investments, high migration of the best skills, less jobs. We are the party that is focused on creating the new jobs and these jobs will not be created if this crime spree as seen under this Jagdeo-Rohee-Ramotar regime continues.
In a nutshell, we in the AFC will do the following:
1. drugs – working closing with the DEA (open a new DEA office in Guyana);
2. increase substantially the salaries of the police – 20% salary increase in the first year of a Ramjattan government is the number our team is coming up with;
3. re-engage powerful friendly governments such as the British for technical and financial assistance to professionalize and reform the Joint Services – serve and protect the people, not the ruling politicians only;
4. boost the system to investigate complaints against the police – power to the people;
5. the forensic auditor – white collar criminals beware.
I close with a quote from our presidential candidate Khemraj Ramjattan:
“The Alliance For Change is the key for Guyana, the key to unlock us from the divisive racial politics of the past, from the corruption that engulfs us, from the oppressive taxes we are forced to pay, from the deadly crime that haunts and traumatizes us, from the economic decline, and from the hopelessness that we breathe daily.”
Yours faithfully,
Sasenarine Singh
