Declaring that the security sector is “worse off,” PPP/C MP Clement Rohee yesterday called on Minister of Public Security Khemraj Ramjattan to say whether he is losing the war on crime.
Addressing the National Assembly during the budget debate, Rohee said there has been a reduction in the public security objectives in the sector from three in 2015 to two in 2016 and to just one in 2017, and this reflects a total lack of vision.
He questioned whether the Guyana Police Force was capable of delivering, “when the infighting and backstabbing is taking place at the highest level of the organisation and in the public. What example are they setting? How can they guarantee good order in society?”
He told the National Assembly that while Minister of Finance Winston Jordan had claimed that the $21 billion allocated to the sector was adequate to tackle the crime situation, what mattered was not how much money was pumped into the security sector, but how many lives were being saved and that people’s properties were being protected.
According to him, the criminals are running amok throughout the country and “citizens cannot walk the land in peace. Criminals are making their lives miserable, creating conditions of insecurity.”
He claimed that the “bandits are reacting to the political instructions issued to law enforcement; the secrets being sent to the criminal underworld are upsetting the populace. Criminals seem to have more intelligence than law enforcement; they know how the money is moving and which bank it is coming from and where it will be at a given point in time.”
Rohee told the National Assembly too that law enforcement was being used as a political football and when the government was on the opposite side of the House, “all that the PPP administration did was bad and was not supported.”
He asserted that the then opposition did not support the policy initiatives then, “because they claimed they had an election to win, so the means justified the end. It didn’t matter if wrong signals were being sent to the criminals.
“They claimed that they had all the answers while they were in the opposition and even boasted of many intelligence and security experts and now they are in the government, they have to face the music. The security sector is no better off, in fact, it is worse off.”
He called on the government to increase the strength of the police force but said “note must be taken of the recommendation of the Disciplined Services Commission report with respect to the ethnic composition of the force.”
He argued too that there is need for “constant examination of the concept of the use of force in the present day context. There is need to strike the right balance between strong law enforcement and the human rights of citizens.”
He told the House that government has “abandoned polygraphing and many other initiatives taken by the previous administration,” and while it was claiming that crime is down, he questioned whether any independent survey was done to determine the crime rate.
