Guyana News

A government team yesterday met with a team from the opposition on the Camp Street breakout on Sunday and it was disclosed that a Commission of Inquiry into the matter is to be held.

Camp Street Prison inmates temporarily housed at the Lusignan jail yesterday morning protested the conditions under which they are being kept and attempted to set the facility on fire but quick work by the Guyana Fire Service prevented what could have been a major disaster.

Three persons died and two others were in an unconscious state up to press time last night after the car they were travelling in collided with the rear of a truck in the vicinity of Kairuni, along the Linden-Soesdyke Highway.

A manhunt is underway in Berbice for a man who beat and raped a 75-year-old Crabwood Creek, Corentyne, Berbice woman, who succumbed in hospital yesterday afternoon.

­-lawmen among four others remanded Former Republic Bank employee Jamal Haynes will be spending the next six years in jail after he pleaded guilty to charges stemming from the attempted robbery of the bank’s Water Street branch that ended in a fatal shootout last Tuesday morning.

Amid jitters over Sunday’s prison break, the private sector yesterday met with Public Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan and heads of the police and prisons and the point was made that this government should not have disbanded the Law and Order Commission.

Police on the West Bank of Demerara were last night able to apprehend murder accused Desmond James, one of the six prisoners who escaped from the Camp Street Prison during Sunday’s jailbreak.

The Ministry of Public Security yesterday identified the 57 prisoners who were recently granted an early release by Minister Khemraj Ramjattan in the wake of the devastation of the Camp Street Prison.

Security has been tightened in Berbice since last Sunday’s fire and breakout at the Georgetown Prison, Camp Street.

The opposition People’s Progressive Party (PPP) yesterday said that President David Granger and his government cannot evade blame for the Camp Street Prison jailbreak and fire.

The Juvenile Justice Bill will be presented to Parliament by month end, Minister of Public Security Khemraj Ramjattan said on Wednesday, while speaking on issues related to ‘Youth, Crime and Violence’ at the University of Guyana’s eighth Turkeyen and Tain talks.

Religious groups yesterday urged elected national leaders to commit to working together more productively in order to ensure peace and development.

Vice-Chancellor of the University of Guyana Professor Ivelaw Griffith has defended the decision taken to host an Investiture Ceremony for his appointment, while stating that it is a tradition at other institutions and an important part of the university’s maturation.

The suspect who was held in connection with the fatal shooting of bus driver Tedroy James earlier this week during a robbery has admitted his involvement in the crime and has implicated two accomplices who are yet to be apprehended.

Minister of Public Security Khemraj Ramjattan will lobby Cabinet to grant slain prison officer Odinga Wickham’s family $1 million after he was fatally shot during Sunday’s Camp Street Prison jailbreak.

The family of an Agricola, East Bank Demerara woman, who was accidentally wounded during a shootout between members of the Guyana Police Force and alleged bandits, is seeking compensation to foot her medical bills.

Minister of Public Security Khemraj Ramjattan is hopeful that the risk posed by the overcrowding of prisons across the country will serve as a catalyst for the swift amendment of the laws so that possession of small amounts of marijuana will not carry lengthy prison sentences.

The Guyana Gold and Diamond Miners Associa-tion (GGDMA) on Thursday bemoaned the amount of time it is taking the government to fix key roads in the interior, saying it is stymying efforts to ship supplies and fuel to mining camps.

General Secretary of the Rice Producers’ Association (RPA) Dharamkumar Seeraj is accusing the APNU+AFC coalition government of using “skillful statistics” to inflate the rice production for this year.

Thresha Griffith, the Essequibo woman who was stabbed late last month, has been discharged from the hospital and is at home recuperating.