MINISTER within the Ministry of Natural Resources Simona Broomes has labelled disgraceful and disrespectful the recent vicious beating of a woman by a policeman stationed at Ekereku, a location in Region 7 (Cuyuni-Mazaruni).She is also calling on other women who have been similarly maltreated to come see her at her ministry.
The latest victim, 30-year-old Maxine Duncan-Seenauth, a mother of four, of Albertown, here in the city, turned up yesterday at the Public Buildings seeking redress from the government.
She particularly sought out Minister Broomes, and in the presence of reporters related her story, saying she not only wants justice to be served, but to be compensated as well for her injuries, and the gold and diamonds her assailant allegedly confiscated from her.
She said she’d ideally like the lawman and his colleague, much as the latter tried to help her somewhat, to be taught a lesson, since her injuries are causing her much pain and discomfort.
“Compensation would really help me, ‘cause this person took away all of my gold and my diamond before I came home; I came home with hardly anything,” Seenauth said, adding:
“He say I is a ‘pacoo’ and a ‘mook’, so I am here to show him what a ‘pacoo’ could do.”
Besides her injured pride, Seenauth said she’s also in severe pain.
“This thing is messing with my brain; up to now my head can’t go down, my whole one side… I can’t hear on one side. I can’t take off this shades,” she said.
According to earlier reports, Seenauth was badly beaten to the head and about the body with a bottle last week while socialising with friends at the Ekereku Landing.
While making it clear that she was no prostitute, the woman said she is still at a loss as to why the policemen were disrespectful to her.
Both men, she said, were in the habit of harassing her, not for sex, but money and drinks; “a bless-up”, as they would call it.
HAD EVERY RESPECT
According to the woman, she has always had nothing but respect for policemen, particularly those in the ‘backdam’, even though they would harass her and others from time to time.
Policemen, she said, get away with many wrongdoings in the ‘backdam’.
“At times they have no limit; no manners; they don’t know how to speak to you,” Seenauth said, adding:

“There’s so many things that goes on there, nobody don’t really know; they assaulting people; they pinning things on people; they coming in yuh room and taking things out.”
She said that ever since her assailant was stationed at Ekereku, he began bullying and pressuring her for money.
“He’s been taking my money away from me; he’s been asking me for things; he’s been pressuring me. The pressure is too much in the interior,” she said.
She said after the beating, he and his friends tried apologising to her, but did everything in their power to prevent her from coming to Georgetown while her injuries were still fresh.
“They apologise to me like a hundred times before I came home; they didn’t even want to put me on a plane,” she said.
They then tried a different tack, that of appealing to her motherly side.
“One officer told me I have children; that I have sons and wouldn’t like something like this to happen to them,” Seenauth said, adding that her reply was that had her sons something like this, they would have had to face the full brunt of the law.
AGE-OLD PROBLEM
Meanwhile, Minister Broomes told reporters that the abuse of women working in the extractive industry is an age-old problem which the APNU+AFC government will seriously address.
“I wanna make it quite clear,” she said, “that the extractive industry will no longer be seen as the ‘bush’ or the ‘backdam’ where one, and especially persons who are supposed to protect, is a law unto themself and a master for the ‘bush’. It will not be condoned!”
She said even if a woman is a prostitute, an officer’s duty is to protect and not abuse them.
“Women go in the interior, some of them not even as prostitutes; they go there to do their business. Officers who are supposed to be protecting them would come to them for sexual favours, and they have to give in, otherwise they sometimes threaten them to move them off the landing. They take away their money,” Minister Broomes said.
She recalled that once when she was President of Guyana Women Miners Organisation (GWMO), a prostitute in the Mahdia backdam had cause to complain to her about police harassment.
“She came out publicly and said the officer is coming to her room, and they had to sell marijuana and drugs for him; and if they refuse, he’s threatening to put them off the landing.”
Minister Broomes said yesterday that she’s already contacted Minister of Public Security, Mr Khemraj Ramjattan, and Police Commander of ‘F’ Division, Mr Ravindradat Budhram about the matter, and that statements were taken from Duncan-Seenauth.
She said though the policemen in question have since been transferred, investigations have not ended.
“And it’s not a matter of being transferred… I hope that at the end of the investigations, the officers, if they are culpable, go before the court like anybody else,” Minister Broomes said.
Minister Broomes has been a strong advocate against violence against women and girls, and had particular interest in the extractive sector.
“It’s not only a disgrace, it just goes to show the level of disrespect! I don’t care if the woman in question, if she works in a shop, if she’s a prostitute, I don’t care if she’s a foreign national,” Minister Broomes said.
Minister Broomes said several complaints have reached her ministry about the abuse of Venezuelan women and other foreign nationals, and that she has sounded a call to victims of such abuse to seek the government’s intervention.
“Several complaints have been coming to us about the kinds of abuse they are facing up with, and I wanna encourage those women also to speak out against those things; come in to us and bring the matter to our attention, so that we can together deal with this matter with the abuse with women in the extractive industry,” Minister Broomes said.