OUTGOING Canadian High Commissioner to Guyana, Dr. Nicole Giles, along with a team, yesterday paid a courtesy call on the newly appointed Second Vice President and Public Security Minister, Mr. Khemraj Ramjattan, at the Ministry of Public Security, Brickdam, Georgetown. During the meeting, the two officials discussed a number of areas of mutual interest that could see possible collaboration between the two countries.

According to the Minister, among several issues discussed were training and capacity building for Guyana Police Force officers. “Better training from the Royal Mounted Branch, also the police college out of Canada, it has to do with mentoring our policemen and women,” said the Minister.
This, he added, will be done in five areas: gender violence, women in police leadership, human rights, crime scene management and public corruption.
Dr. Giles pointed out that funds will be available through a grant of CAN$750,000 to help develop the justice system in Guyana.
This money is a part of a project with the Justice Education Society of British Columbia, which is a Canadian Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), which aims at strengthening the justice system.
It is expected to be spent on legislative drafting, improving the administrative department of the courts, and training for lawyers and judges, along with capacity building for police officers.
The Security Minister also noted that crime scene management will be a major focus under this training programme, because “here in Guyana, it is believed that almost anybody can go on the scene, it is not done properly, and then evidence and a whole lot of other things are tampered with negligently, and sometimes deliberately.”
He also reiterated that, “we feel with this type of training that we are going to implement in the police force, we will get better results and far more deterring effects… we feel that it can have direct influence in impunity rates.”
Minister Ramjattan said, “I believe we are on a good road here in bringing more success in the security sector.”(GINA)