THE Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) will remain closed indefinitely as the agency recovers from Saturday’s fire which gutted the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR), the Construction Department and Stores.

This is according to the DPP’s Public Relations Officer (PRO), Liz Rahaman, who told the Guyana Chronicle during a telephone interview on Tuesday, that matters in the criminal assizes have not been affected.

“The DPP office remains closed indefinitely to the general public. The fire has severely restricted all of our operations save and except the criminal assizes, and the appearance of state counsel in the assizes, mainly because the state counsel in the assizes would’ve had in their possession the documents that they need to go to court with,” she said.

Like Rahaman, Minister of Home Affairs, Robeson Benn, said the disruption is a setback and he has indicated that extra resources will be allocated to assist the office to get back to its normal functioning as soon as possible.

The office is responsible for the administration of justice in criminal causes or matters and has control over the prosecution of criminal matters against any person before any court, other than a court-martial.

“The DPP office is an instrumental office in the functioning of the criminal justice system in Guyana. So, it will have a setback and as soon as the DPP can get our office sorted out, we will restart our functions,” Rahaman said.

As the fire ravaged the section that housed OPR, a large number of documents, files and books were removed from the office. Drawers from file cabinets were piled into police vehicles to be relocated to a secure location while documents were thrown through windows on the top floor of the building, Fortunately, there was only minor structural damage to the office in the aftermath of the fire.

“In the process of being saved, while the fire was raging, those documents, the law books, everything were just thrown out of windows and brought out haphazardly because of course, with a fire raging, nobody is able to do things in a logical way. We are grateful, for the saving of the books and those documents and books are now being safely guarded,” Rahaman said.

She told this publication that the office is currently focused on cleaning the building, after which the Director, Shalimar Ali-Hack, will have to go through the documents and organise them.

“As it relates to the chambers, the structure still stands but with the internal offices, the staff, we have collaborated and are cleaning our little space. What Madam DPP will do, at a later time, is go through all of the documents and we will sort them all out again. We are hoping and praying that as soon as humanly possible that we can resume our functions for the benefit of the Guyanese public,” Rahaman said.

Meanwhile, Minister Benn told the Guyana Chronicle that he is hopeful that things could return to normal functioning within a few weeks given the critical role of the DPP.

He noted that Saturday’s fire has compounded the situation that was created by the October 2 fire at the Brickdam Police Station.

“Even though the files of the DPP [were] saved and the office spared…everything is in disarray at this time… Expect it to be some time before they have the files organised. With the jumbled state that it is in, we will have to spend some time to put enough people so that we could access them for the work of the court,” Benn noted.