Dear Editor,
Whilst currently in Trinidad and Tobago I need to obtain urgently police clearance from the Guyana Police Service for my wife and myself. After we followed the procedure advised for this by the Guyana Consulate in Trinidad, a niece in Georgetown duly paid the required fee and applied with the prescribed information to CID on our behalf.
We were informed more than once that the normal processing time for such applications was five days. The applications were lodged on December 30, 2016 and we were advised that collection could be done on January 9, 2017 a matter of about six working days; but on that date my niece was advised to return one week later. The reason for the prolonged delay given by the CID officer was that the printer was not working.
This has the appearance of an act of discrimination against me, and my family by association. We are denied the normal time entitlement allotted other citizens for the processing of the documentation, and this, based on a failure of the internal functioning of the CID operation. There is no apology for the obvious inconvenience, and it all seems a cavalier and flimsy excuse. Further, it has all the hallmarks of contrived, petty victimisation harking back to the February 2016 incident when delivery of the Walter Rodney CoI report was delayed to the President because, amongst other things, ink for printing the report had run out. This is the larger issue at stake and the reason why this otherwise preposterous statement by the CID section or officer concerned is noteworthy. In February last, the Attorney General, Basil Williams, in a public statement gave the distinct impression that the Inquiry Commissioners were responsible for the trite matter of printing ink when in fact the depleted ink was the responsibility of the CoI secretariat, under the purview of a Minister.
On this occasion any enquiry at the CID section concerned, or examination of the police clearance document, would show that that document is pre-printed and can be completed manually by the officer concerned. Any claim of an out-of-order printer seems far-fetched and simply for the purpose of creating a round of tit-for-tat against me. The Rodney CoI report itself highlighted the need for a highly professional Guyana Police Force. In any event if the Granger regime is to recommit to the challenge of taking Guyana forward, the state must foster a Police Force as a whole which fights shy of any act of partisanship.
This act by the police should cease immediately, and ought to be condemned outright.
Yours faithfully,
Donald Rodney
