Cabinet has green lit a $25 million project which will see CCTV Surveillance Systems being purchased for the Guyana Prison Service, Minister of State Joseph Harmon announced on Friday.
This development follows repeated concerns about the security arrangements in place at the country’s prisons and the fact that raids continue to unearth large amounts of contraband.
Speaking at a post-Cabinet press briefing, Harmon said the contract in the sum of $25,719,619 has been awarded to NT Computeac.
The Camp Street, Georgetown Prison is likely to be a beneficiary of this project, but Harmon did not state which prisons would benefit, or in what sections cameras would be placed.
Director of Prisons (Ag) Gladwin Samuels had told Stabroek News last November that the Guyana Prison Service had identified several possible measures, including the installation of body scanners to decrease the likelihood of contraband entering prisons and hoped to act on them as money became available.
“…The time has come for us to depend more on advanced technology and to minimise our reliance on the human factor and I am saying this because when you visit prisons across the world … [they] are very successful in terms of keeping contraband out because of the assistance given by technology, be it surveillance systems, [or] scanners for both bags and humans,” Samuels had said. He noted that the technological measures serve as a deterrent to persons who want to make attempts to get contraband into prisons.
His comments were made in the wake of the discovery of an assortment of contraband, including weapons, drugs and mobile phones, when the Joint Services conducted raids on November 12 last at the Georgetown and New Amsterdam prisons.
At the Georgetown Prison, 21 improvised weapons and knives, 20 razor blades, 558 grammes of marijuana, 22 cellular phones and five gallons of homemade wine, along with a number of other banned items were found. A smaller number of similar items were found at the New Amsterdam Prison.
In a statement announcing the discovery, the Ministry of the Presidency had said the security forces were gravely concerned at the recovery of such a large haul of contraband at the Georgetown Prison, which had been previously searched on September 23, 2016.
Samuels told this newspaper that for a number of years the prison service had been facing a number of challenges as it relates to contraband being found in the prisons whenever searches are done. There are three other prisons in Guyana and these are situated at Mazaruni, Lusignan and Timehri. Random searches of all of the facilities are usually conducted by the prison service alone or in collaboration with the Joint Services.
“We have asked ourselves several times why is it that every time we do these searches we would unearth so much contraband and we have been able to answer some of those questions,” he said.
As a result, the prison administration, he pointed out, was trying to put several measures in place to reduce the presence of contraband. “The more we do, persons will continue to find more innovative ways in terms of getting those items into the prison,” he had said.
Following a violent attack at the New Amsterdam Prison in 2014, former police commissioner Winston Felix had suggested that using surveillance cameras with offsite monitoring facilities 24/7 could be explored. Felix is the present Minister of Citizenship.
