THE patrol boat purchased by the Government of Guyana through the Ministry of Home Affairs for the Guyana Police Force will not be handed over until critical works and installations have been effected to the vessel.

This is according to Home Afrfairs Minister, Clement Rohee.
According to the Minister, the reason the boat has not been handed over to the police is because there are special works which have to be done on the vessel; and those works could not have been done outside of Guyana. The boat is to be added to the marine wing of the Guyana Police Force.
Rohee went on to state that when the boat arrived, funds were not available to have the works done; and as such, the ministry had to approach the Ministry of Finance to secure money from the Contingency Fund to effect additional works to the vessel.
The Ministry of Finance was already written and the Home Affairs Ministry is now awaiting the release of the funds from the Ministry of Finance to move ahead with the works. Rohee did not go into the details of the works which needed to be done on the vessel.
A company has already been contracted to carry out those works, but the name of that company was not disclosed by the minister. Rohee is confident that the vessel which has been in Guyana for about a month now will soon be ready to be integrated into the marine wing of the Guyana Police Force.
Asked about the other vessel which was bought by the Guyana Police Force while Winston Felix was the Commissioner of Police and which never served the police force, the minister promptly responded, “Oh that was a fiasco.” He said that it was unfortunate that there was also some amount of corruption surrounding the purchase of the vessel and that was dealt with by the police.
That boat has since been handed over to the Ministry of Public Works who passed it onto the Maritime Administration Department. However, since the boat was handed over it has not been put into operation since several works have to be carried out on it before it becomes operational.
Those works include the procuring of two engines, batteries and works in other areas.

(By Leroy Smith)