Guyana’s jungle west of the Essequibo River can be a very lawless place. Bandits easily exploit the Guyana Police Force’s inability to effectively patrol the ‘bush’ in order to commit violent crimes. Last week’s murders are evidence of this.
Head of the Force’s Criminal Investigation Department Assistant Commissioner Seelall Persaud admitted to this newspaper that it was difficult to tackle the problem of crime in the hinterland because of the scattered population and inadequate communications there. He admitted that it was not easy to move around, that the police stations were situated very far apart and that patrols could not cover the distances because of the size of the districts.
That is part of the problem. The hinterland is a vast area. In its wisdom, the Police Force amalgamated ‘E’ and ‘F’ Divisions − merging five of the largest administrative regions comprising about 163, 000 km² or approximately 70 per cent of this country’s territory. This single police division − starting as close to Georgetown as Dora on the Soesdyke-Linden Highway − is responsible for over 1,800 km of land borders with Brazil and Venezuela and stretches beyond Achiwuib in the South, Kaikan in the West and Morawhanna in the North.
The division is hopelessly under-manned and under-resourced. The Police Force does not possess the aircraft, vehicles, vessels, personnel and other resources to investigate crimes in the widely dispersed villages, logging camps and mines. This suits the bandits. Robbery with violence is a frequent occurrence and it is easy for assailants to escape. Bandits pounce on miners in their camps or lie in wait in the bush along the roads and trails to ambush, rob, kill and vanish without a trace.
Someone is murdered somewhere in the jungle every month. These crimes, notwithstanding, Minister of Home Affairs Clement Rohee claimed that the administration has had a “functioning security plan for interior regions of this country ever since the events of 2008.” Mr Rohee pointed out that, from the time of the Christmas Falls shoot-out, the security sector has been “meeting on a weekly basis” to strengthen arrangements for Police Divisions E and F. He added, “We have put in place a number of arrangements to deal with these situations.”
Mr Rohee is right about the meetings of which there have been many. The “arrangements” have made no visible improvement on the security situation, however. The Commissioner of the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission and the Commissioner of Police had agreed on a “plan of action” to stem violent attacks and murders in the hinterland in October 2003. President Bharrat Jagdeo, then Minister of Home Affairs Gail Teixeira and Commissioner of Police Winston Felix met executives of the Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Association in January 2006 to discuss hinterland security. The Minister himself was obliged to meet executives of the mining community in July 2008 to explain why the recommendations of previous joint meetings remained unimplemented.
In the wake of last week’s murders, Mr Rohee found himself at the other end of the country – in Crabwood Creek on the Corentyne Coast – leading a team of the National Commission on Law and Order. There, according to the Government Information Agency, he discussed “petty crimes, requests for firearm licences, encumbrances on the public road and government reserves, drug-trafficking, noise nuisance, youth gangs, irresponsible garbage disposal, and slothful response by the police.”
It could be that Mr Rohee might not have comprehended fully the gravity of the crime problem in the hinterland. He needs to leave the coastland more often, visit the hinterland, examine the security situation for himself and provide the police with the resources to maintain law and order there.
