GENERAL Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party, Clement Rohee, wants the David Granger-led administration to fire its Public Security Minister, Khemraj Ramjattan, over last week’s riot at the Georgetown Prison, which claimed the lives of 17 inmates.

At a press conference at the Party’s headquarters on Monday, Rohee, under whose watch there were numerous prison breakouts at Camp Street, New Amsterdam, and even at Mazaruni, said President Granger has “consciously overlooked the dismissal of Ramjattan as the Minister of Public Security of this country.”

“Lying at the feet of Ramjattan, and indeed the Granger administration, are seventeen — not three — dead bodies…Heads must roll for this unforgiveable and unforgettable episode,” Rohee said.

Under Rohee’s watch as minister, there were also three massacres which occurred in one year, claiming the lives of 11 persons at Lusignan, 12 at Bartica, and nine at Lindo Creek.

Contacted by the Guyana Chronicle, Minister Ramjattan dismissed Rohee’s call for him to be fired. He noted that the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces still has confidence in his abilities.

“If he wants, he can go to the Parliament and move a no-confidence motion against me, like what the Opposition did to him while he was Minister; because I am quite sure that if he was minister, last week the situation would have been worse,” Ramjattan told this newspaper.

The Minister said that, based on how things unfolded after the unfortunate incident at the prison, he is confident that the government had managed the situation to the best of its ability, and had transformed the issue, which would have further deteriorated if Rohee were still Home Affairs Minister.

Rohee, on the other hand, made reference to a Bill which was tabled in the National Assembly in 2014, seeking to change the name of the Guyana Prison Service to the “Guyana Prison and Correctional Service.” That bill did not receive the support of the one-seat majority of the then APNU+AFC Opposition, and according to Rohee, the name change was to reflect the deep changes that were to come as a result of the implementation of the Strategic Plan for the Guyana Prison Service, led by a civilian composed Strategic Management Department within the Prison Service.

“The Granger administration must look at all the Prison locations in the country, and not only the Georgetown Prison. The informal, illegal networking among prisoners at the various locations is unimaginable and challenging; consequently, they pose serious security risks to the country as a whole, were they to be activated in a coordinated manner at the same time,” Rohee said.

He suggested that in order to prevent any recurrence of this type, the Granger coalition administration must pick up from where the PPP/C left off; but he admitted that the PPP did not leave a perfect system in place.

“The blueprint is there for them to examine carefully and to press ahead with implementation of the Strategic Plan for Prison Reform…. The PPP/C had its challenges at prison locations around the country. The Party would be the last to say that it has left a perfect system in place, but at the same time it would be true to say that the challenges were not insurmountable, nor without solutions.”

The remand section of the Georgetown Prison saw, last week, three days of rioting, which left 17 inmates dead and several others injured following a fire which they set at the penitentiary after prison officers had raided their cells and had found 19 cell phones and marijuana.

Several prison officers and joint services ranks were also injured during confrontations with the prisoners, who were protesting for better conditions in the prison system.

At the request of the prisoners, Minister Ramjattan and Minister of State, Joseph Harmon, visited the prison on Friday and met with the inmates, thus managing to quell the situation.

Deputy Director of Prisons, Gladwin Samuels, has since been sent on six weeks’ leave by the government, following allegations by the inmates that he had ordered that the 17 prisoners be burnt to death.

President Granger has also ordered a Commission of Inquiry into the prison deaths and riots.