Finance Minister Winston Jordan

– Minister Jordan admits crime situation is “pressing, depressing”

BY VAHNU MANICKCHAND

As the country continues to grapple with the increasing number of criminal activities, Government is still in the process of “fine-tuning” a comprehensive plan for the security sector to boost crime prevention initiatives.

Delivering his maiden budget presentation, Finance Minister Winston Jordan on Monday pointed out that the crime situation is the most “pressing and most depressing” problem that Guyana is facing, highlighting the need to address it.

“The Government is fine-tuning a comprehensive public security plan, in which emphasis is to be placed on combating crime; regaining trust of the Police Force; improving Police investigative capabilities, by rebuilding an efficient and effective criminal intelligence system and the Criminal Investigation Department; improving recruitment standards and training by revitalising the Cadetship Scheme; counteracting human, drugs and arms trafficking; and acquiring vehicles and equipment for modern policing to fight banditry, piracy, terrorism and other violent crimes,” the Minister remarked.

Investigators at a crime scene in Cummings

Serious crimes on the rise

His comments were made in light of cries by Guyanese in the past few months, over the apparent raise in criminal activities in the country, with more murders and armed robberies occurring daily. After a 12 per cent and four per cent decline in serious crime in January and February respectively, Guyana has since experienced a spike in the number of serious crimes over the past few months, according to statistics released by the Police Force.

In March, the Police reported a six per cent hike in serious crimes while in April a seven per cent increase was also recorded. At the end of May, serious crime in the country had gone up to 10 per cent; however in the following month, it had dropped to nine per cent. Records relating to the month of July are yet to be released.

$21B to strengthen security

On this note, Jordan disclosed that Government has allocated a whopping $21 billion to strengthen and improve the country’s various national security services. The Finance Minister noted some $11.9 billion will be plugged into supporting the operations of the Guyana Police Force, the Guyana Prison Service, Guyana Fire Service, and the Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit. Meanwhile, he added that the remaining $9.1 billion will be directed towards the operations of the Guyana Defence Force.

According to Jordan, these allocations will be injected into improving the physical infrastructure, upgrade of the security fleet, and acquisition of tools and equipment within these security services. Additionally, the money will also be used to upgrade the security features of the machine readable passports, while another $9.7 million was budgeted for the acquisition of specialised equipment for the production of machine readable passports.

Moreover, Jordan disclosed that his Administration intends to implement all of the recommendations that were made by the Disciplined Forces Commission. He added that they will also be approaching friendly nations and international crime-fighting agencies.

The Finance Minister underscored the need to have a radical action that will reform the country’s criminal justice system. He further noted that the Police Force needs to be more accountable to the general public and be better able to deal with crime as well as anti-social behaviour.

Meanwhile, the Finance Minister went onto revealed that Government will roll out the implementation of several activities to support the security sector under the Citizens Security Programme. He noted that a key aspect of this Programme is the implementation of evidence-based interventions associated with interpersonal violence, such as parenting, gender values and norms and conflict resolution.

According to the Minister, “Training of selected community members to support economic inclusion, through vocational and remedial training; literacy programmes; job readiness; job seeking and job placement actions; entrepreneurship; mentoring; counselling and psychological skills training will aid communities in identifying  community problems and developing  bottom-up solutions to crime and violence”.

Jordan added that such support will also target the strengthening of the Guyana Police Force’s Crime Prevention and Investigative capabilities, through forensic and criminal investigative techniques and training as well as through the application of information technology methodologies in crime detection and inter-agency co-ordination.

Command centre to be established

In addition, the Minister pointed out that his Government will establish a command centre to enhance crime response capabilities. He added that other intervention adopted by this Administration includes resuscitation of Close Circuit Television (CCTV) feeds within the Georgetown to Timehri environs and the improvement in 911 services countrywide.

On the other hand, during his presentation, the Finance Minister criticised the previous People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Administration for its failure to effectively arrest banditry, piracy and criminal violence and other crimes that plague the Guyanese society.

However, the PPP/C during its tenure in office had invested billions in the security sector and implemented several programmes and initiatives to curb the surging crime rates. While a break down in figures was not presented by Minister Jordan, the PPP/C during its 2014 Budget Presentation channelled $1.1 billion each to the operations of Joint Services and equipping the forces.

In addition, sum of $382.6 million was allocated to train the Joint Services, while $413 million was budgeted to train and equip Community Policing Groups countrywide in an effort to restore safe neighbourhoods to citizens.