…as Sindicatos threat increases

GUYANA will be beefing up security against the notorious Venezuelan gang, Sindicatos, whose members have been operating within the border regions and have been terrorising Guyanese citizens for some time.
As recent as this month, a Guyanese policeman was shot and injured by members of the notorious gang.

On Friday Minister of Foreign Affairs Carl Greenidge in an interview with Demerarawaves said that Cabinet last week, discussed and decided that action will be taken, even as it sought a report from the military on ongoing efforts.

“The police and the military have been alerted. I believe that last week we asked at the National Security Committee that the necessary steps be taken… [such as] sending out patrols and so forth,” he said.

However, Greenidge was unable to confirm rumours that members of the Venezuelan National Guard are involved. “We’ve got no information to that effect,” he stated. “As a matter of fact, we’re waiting right now [as] last evening or the evening before I was looking at Cabinet’s discussion because the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was, at that time, to receive some information from the military as to what they have been doing. So that, if necessary, if that’s appropriate, we will take diplomatic action but that, at this point in time, is not proven.”

Should this rumour prove to be true, Greenidge said that the country’s first step would be to converse with the Venezuelan Government. “Whenever there is evidence that these are activities which have official cloak or whenever we have the details, we do convey by way of note verbale to the Government of Venezuela. If they are recurring events we would normally write, but of course… curbing those things is not necessarily as easy as one might think,” he said.

Elaborating further on what it would take to bring the harassment to an end, the Foreign Affairs Minister said: “You can’t, of course, eliminate them until you intensify those authorities and try and get some intelligence as to who have been carrying out these things. So, it’s an ongoing process; in other words, it’s not a one-step exercise. You don’t simply say ‘this happened, do something’ and then everything stops. It’s a process and they [the disciplined services] are aware of the urgency and the concerns at this stage.”
Two weeks ago, a Guyanese policeman Quincy Alexander, a resident of Amelia’s Ward, Linden, was shot and injured by the gang. In a statement, police had said that a wooden vessel ferrying seven passengers from Eteringbang to Macapa in the Cuyuni River, was fired upon by a group of armed men standing on the Venezuelans’ side of the border.
The incident occurred in the vicinity of Butanuamu Creek Point, police said in the statement. Corporal Alexander, who was one of the passengers, was struck by a bullet in his lower back.