The United States has given a commitment to assist Guyana with the surveillance of its porous borders to help reduce the entrance of drugs and small arms into the country, Minister of Public Security Khemraj Ramjattan said.
Ramjattan raised the country’s border security concerns during a Caribbean Basin Security Initiative (CBSI) dialogue, held in Washington recently.
“We told them [the US] that we would like to have surveillance equipment. If it is not going to be airplanes, [then] drones that could go a good hundred miles and come back and be at some command centre. They have other technologies that I am not too savvy about that they can probably utilize through satellite imagery. These are expensive things but in the exercise of trying to stop drugs and stop firearms entering Guyana… they have made a commitment that there will be assistance in that regard,” he disclosed at an AFC press conference last Friday.
Ramjattan was asked whether he had raised any specific security challenge.
While noting that Guyana has great difficulties with border control, he emphasised that most of the illicit items are smuggled across the section of the border shared with Brazil.
“More and more the evidence is from Brazil. We are having more small arms coming in. So whilst we have sharpened up in relation to interdiction of guns coming in from North America through our GRA system… we also have to look at having some eyes in the Brazilian territory which is a very long, porous border too,” he said.
According to Ramjattan, it was pointed out at the meeting that the border needs more surveillance. “The surveillance there will be expensive because that more or less will probably have to be done by airplane and the Americans have spent a lot of money under this Caribbean Basin Security Initiative, about $480 million so far,” he said.
The CBSI is the result of US President Barack Obama’s commitment to a security partnership with the region, made at the Fifth Summit of the Americas, in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, in May, 2009.
Ramjattan told reporters that he and his fellow Caribbean ministers agreed that there were a number of issues which had to be dealt with. The written agreement coming out of the meeting was shared with the members of the media present at the press conference.
According to the agreement, the Caribbean nations and the US agreed to be committed to the priorities of substantially reducing illicit trafficking, advancing public safety and security and promoting social justice to improve the lives of citizens.
They also agreed to underscore the importance of implementing policies to promote security, continuing efforts through regional integration mechanisms and financing Caribbean national and regional public safety and security institutions.
It was also agreed that they will underscore the value of international partner support and the need to improve coordination and reduce duplication of efforts to maximise the effectiveness of that support towards advancing common security objectives in the Caribbean.
According to the agreement, these critical efforts will be advanced through substantially reducing illicit trafficking, advancing public safety and security, further promoting social justice and establishing a stronger partnership for the future.
Speaking broadly on security matters and initiatives, Ramjattan said the Americans have spent a huge amount of money on security in Central America. He said countries such as Columbia and Venezuela, where the narcotics trade proliferates are using Guyana as a conduit and they have been doing so for some time now. “That is why we have been finding lots of airplanes… and they are lots of other planes we understand that have flown in and flown out back to carry their stuff to Europe and North America and now we know that they do drop offs and then it is brought to Georgetown and put in containers and that is how Guyana containers with rice and a whole lot of things are being caught in other countries with the cocaine,” he said.
He said that at the CBSI session Guyana was complimented for the strides it has been making in interdiction efforts.
Ramjattan pointed out that law enforcement officials will continue to go after drug traffickers. “I understand from my Minister of Finance too that that [interdictions] have had an effect on the economy because a lot of this drug money was rampant in and around there and we even caught one that was equivalent to Roger Khan, the famous fella from Suriname, Barry Dataram, and so we are gonna catch them and we are getting the resources and we have gotten more organised and more specialised in the training,” he said.
He said too that a number of Guyanese have been travelling to the US for training, with the latest batch being a bicycle brigade. “We need more patrols but it is expensive to have 4x4s,” he said, while noting that one solution is “Good, strong-looking Guyanese girls and boys on bicycles …equipped with training and doing their job.” He added that there is also crime scene investigation training ongoing. He said that approximately 180 officers have benefited from training since he became minister.
Meanwhile, Ramjattan informed that recently the US agreed to fund the establishment of the Community, Family and Youth Resilience Programme, where “resilience is going to be built at the youth level so as to move them away from pathways to crime towards useful activities.” Those to be targeted would be between the ages of 10 and 29, he said.
