— says Minister Ramjattan

Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan, said the Guyana Police Force will continue to push ahead with training of junior and senior officers as the force positions itself to adapt to the security sector reform.

Ramjattan said while to a great extent training will focus on the Guyana Police Force; it will also include the prison and fire services as well as the Customs Anti-narcotics Unit.
According to the security minister, these agencies can only become better at what they do individually if training is continuous and they are constantly exposed to practices which work in other countries.
He stressed however, that the government cannot realistically send members of the various services on every overseas training that comes up, due to the financial costs attached.

As such, he explained, the heads of the agencies are encouraged to have discussions with those offering the training and experts to travel to Guyana to conduct training.
“We will continue and we want officers to continue training as we want the better sets of units in the areas of homicide, special branch, major crimes, narcotics, traffic and even intelligence, so that they can better monitor what is going on with the criminals around the place, and yes; even traffic also,” Ramjattan told Guyana Chronicle.

The security minister also noted that some spending will be done in the area of customs anti-narcotics, as he pointed to the work CANU and the police have been doing to eradicate illicit substances and cannabis farms in various parts of the country.
He also told this publication that CANU, and the Police Narcotic Branch, have been encouraged to continue networking domestically, regionally and internationally, to sift out those in the local drug trade.

According to him, there is evidence that the networking strategies of the two arms have been working well and this can be measured by the seizures of drugs on a weekly basis.
“The intelligence and networking are no doubt working better now,” Ramjattan said.
With respect to the Guyana Fire Service, it was noted that 13 members of that agency have recently participated in training in oil and gas spills management, and airport accident responses.

“So we have them going for that, some training in airport crash-landing procedures and specialised training for oil and gas fires, and how to respond to these places where the storing of oil will be done and so on,” Ramjattan explained.