THE recent announcement that the Guyana Police Force (GPF) and the Suriname Police Corps (SPC) will be collaborating to tackle organised crime, particularly trafficking in drugs, humans and weapons, is welcome news on the anti-crime front.

From our reports, Police Commissioner Seelall Persaud has said that, as part of the collaboration, specific types of organised crime will be targeted, and modalities on communication and intelligence-sharing will be established. He insisted that sharing information and intelligence has to be timely, and as such, Customs and Trade and CANU will share information directly with the Suriname authorities, along with matters under investigation.

Evidence of this sort of collaboration taking place even before this announcement was made had been borne out when the lawmen in that Dutch-speaking country arrested and deported self-confessed drug lord Barry Dataram a few months ago. The spectacular arrest of fleeing drug lord Roger Khan by the Suriname authorities back in 2006 is also another good example of how invaluable any collaboration between Guyana and Suriname can be in combating organised crime.

What are clear from these two incidents is that Suriname is no safe haven for criminals who may want to flee this jurisdiction, and that country has been a willing partner in fighting crime.

What is also worthy of note is that it has been through the collaboration between Guyana and Suriname that sea piracy has been at an all-time low, with only one case being recorded this year, compared to what had obtained in previous years.

But it is not that Suriname does not have its own struggles. In its 2016 Narcotics Strategy Report, the United States, in addition to saying that that country is a transit zone for South American cocaine en route to Europe and Africa, observed that there appears to be little political will for vigorous enforcement. “Corruption pervades many government offices in Suriname and may also play a role,” the report said, adding that cargo containers carry most of the narcotics smuggled through Suriname, but smaller fishing vessels also carry drugs out to sea for transfer to larger freighters.

During the first nine months of 2015, Surinamese authorities arrested 139 alleged drug traffickers and seized 626.6 kilograms (kg) of cocaine, 33.8 litres of liquid cocaine, 841.7 kg of marijuana, four grams of heroin, 4.3 grams of hashish, and 2,878 MDMA tablets.

Ever since the period of the “Troubles”, as described by President David Granger, Guyana has grappled with organised crime and its attendant street robberies and other deviant behaviours. It is against this background that any effort to strengthen existing strategies ought to be supported and encouraged. Where crime continues to pose threats to the nation’s security and the citizens’ peace of mind, no Guyanese should seek political mileage from another’s misery.

Regardless of our politics, all want to feel, and be, safe; and together, we must work to achieve it.

Commitments given by the President that “Government intends to make Guyana safe for this and future generations [and] we will do so not only by combating crime and criminals, but in uprooting the causes of crime and its links with transnational crime” are deserving of support and participating to ensure realisation.

The recent launch of the drug strategy master plan; the establishment of a National Security Committee and proposed new National Anti-Narcotics Agency (NANA) to address narco-trafficking; and a new National Intelligence and Security Agency (NISA) to beef up surveillance of our borders and coasts will help in crime reduction. Augmentations of the Police Mounted and Marine branches have also been done incrementally, where the former will aid in policing our vast borders and the latter battle piracy.

Reaching out to the United Kingdom (UK) with “a view to restoring the aborted Security Sector Reform Action Plan (SSRAP)” is a necessary component of crime fighting. The PPP/C Administration had rejected the SSRAP implementation — though it was a plan it helped conceive — on the argument that the role the UK wanted to play violated Guyana’s sovereignty. At the same time, its needs to be said that those who would have relied on crime for an income, abominable as it is, must be afforded opportunities to engage in legitimate forms of income earning.

It will not help if the narco trade goes underground, given that it presently operates in broad daylight; because it would be harder to root out, and would make life more dangerous for those who can provide intelligence or want to remove themselves from criminal activities.