Not for the first time in recent years, a leading local business support organization (BSO) has voiced its concern that the crime level could prove to be a serious deterrent to Guyana’s attractiveness as an investment locale.
Speaking at a media briefing on Wednesday to announce its first Security Forum and Exposition which takes place today at Roraima Duke Lodge, Kingston, Georgetown Chamber of Commerce and Industry (GCCI) President Vishnu Doerga revealed that various local and Surinamese security-related companies that will be displaying their products today.
While the media briefing was called to deal with the details of the Security Forum, the exchange between GCCI officials and the media quickly drifted into the realm of safety and the business community. This is in the light of the spate of violent robberies and at least one killing that have occurred in recent days.
Under persistent questioning from some media houses, Doerga conceded that recent efforts by the Guyana Police Force to make public statistics that seek to provide assurances regarding the commission of serious crimes, are being challenged by public perceptions that may well be creating an entirely different reality. “There are the figures and there are the perceptions,” Doerga told the media briefing, adding that the spates of crime that occur even as such figures are being released send a different kind of message.
Today’s forum is intended to raise awareness in the business community regarding the need to further enhance security in the wake of concerns over crimes that increasingly target business houses. In its release earlier this week, the GCCI listed Microsoft, Starr Computers, Safeway Security, GEB Security, Gizmos & Gadgets, Professional Guard Service, INFOTrans Guyana, Integrated Security Services, Qualogy Caribbean, RK Security, National Hardware, Paramaribo Security, N-Remote Tech Support, All Technologies Suriname and The Solutions Centre as being among the presenters and exhibitors expected to participate in today’s event. The event, the release said, “is an extension of the chamber’s efforts to contribute to a safe and secure environment.”
Asked whether the chamber’s efforts to raise the level of security awareness was likely to secure traction across the business community, Doerga said that while the chamber could, through events like today’s forum, point business houses in what it considered to be the right direction, it was for the business houses themselves to embrace the opportunity. This issue arose in the light of media enquiries as to whether “the traditional high street merchants” may not have become stuck in their old ways in the context of perceiving security as being limited to the presence of a seemingly poorly equipped security guard at the entrance of the business premises.
Allied to initiatives like today’s event, Doerga said, the GCCI continued to be engaged in ongoing discourse with the Guyana Police Force on the matter of security and the business sector. In this regard he alluded to what he said were the manpower deficiencies at the level of the force which he said had to be addressed as a corollary to effectively tackling the crime challenge.
