MINISTER of Home Affairs, Clement Rohee, yesterday commended police ranks for a good job done with regard to the recent cocaine bust at Bartica.
He said, “I don’t support the view published in some sections of the media that this was luck and chance thing.”
He said the bust was the result of “alert policing”

“The policemen gathered a certain amount of information and decided to act on it, which I think is commendable”, he said.

He said, “I think it was commendable on the part of the police to discover, apprehend and interdict the individuals, who were involved in this criminal activity.”
On June 9 last, police detained a Venezuelan and four Guyanese after intercepting a vessel with an estimated 204 kilograms of cocaine at Batavia, an island located eight and a half kilometers up the Cuyuni River. The cocaine, with an estimated street value of US$5M, was found stashed in four large plastic containers on a vessel named ‘Amor’.
At about 13:00 hrs ranks from the Bartica Police Station, acting on information, mobilised a team and headed to Batavia.
The five persons on the vessel were taken to the Bartica Police Station and later transferred to the city.
In recent months, Jamaican authorities intercepted two ships that originated from Guyana with large quantities of cocaine.
On Monday, four of the five men caught in last Thursday’s drug bust at Batavia in the Cuyuni River were arraigned at the Georgetown Magistrate’s Court.
The four men, 41-year-old Deonarine Singh of Friendship, East Bank Demerara; 32-year-old Randolph ‘Fatboy’ Singh; 34-year-old Clyn Collier, of South Ruimveldt; and Garcia Luis Alberto, of Venezuela, pleaded not guilty to the offence of trafficking in narcotics.
They were remanded to prison.

The fifth suspect, Terry James, was not in court since he was hospitalized.