WITH the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) completely destroyed following Saturday’s fire, Minister of Home Affairs, Robeson Benn, is calling on persons who have unresolved police complaints with the agency to resubmit their documents.

He said while a temporary location to house the office is being looked at, persons can write to the Office of the Commissioner of Police or to the Ministry of Home Affairs and the information will be forwarded to the OPR.

“We are calling on persons to resubmit any difficulties or complaints they had in terms of police behaviour, while the OPR personnel work on reconstructing and re-establishing what they have into a way in which they can work properly,”  Benn stated in an interview with this publication on Tuesday.

“In many ways they have to start over again in terms of some of the information that they would’ve had and what could’ve been lost. We will have to go back and do some reconstructing and revalidating with respect to complaints that went to the OPR.”

Benn noted that officers from the OPR will also try to actively reach out to persons who had made complaints, for them to come in and have their reports documented.

He was made to understands that some of the files from the agency were saved before the building was gutted.

“They would have to get to the areas from where the information came in to them, and from the people who made complaints. We would have to go back to identify where information came in from, what complaints there were and then to start over again,” he told the Guyana Chronicle.

With the agency still recovering from the fire, Benn said it is still uncertain to what extent documents from the office were saved.
“There was an effort to save some of the files and they may have saved quite a number of files but I’m not sure as to what extent they have been able to save files in terms of percentage,” he noted.

He said information on the new location would be made public later this week.

“I can’t speak specifically to where they have relocated to. I know some of their things were taken over to the police training centre but I can’t say where is their specific location. We will have that tomorrow [Wednesday]. Things are still fluid at the moment,” Benn explained.