Budget 2018 is a step in the right direction- Minister Ramjattan

DPI, Guyana, Thursday, December 7, 2017

Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan said Budget 2018 follows in the line of Budget 2015 and is a step in the right direction.

In his contribution to the debates on Budget 2018, Minister Ramjattan said, “It is a budget that must be supported because all that is in this budget is a continuation of the [Budget] 2015 and that is a journey that will take us to the good life and by phases we are going to get there.”

Minister Ramjattan said among the achievements of his ministry for the current year is the activation of the 911 system, “one major achievement which couldn’t be done by the PPP administration.”

Further, the Minister said the Citizen Security Strengthening Programme (CSSP) has achieved major success in the roll  out of its various components aimed at reducing crime and violence among youths, strengthening the investigative and crime prevention capacity of the Guyana Police Force (GPF) and preventing recidivism among youths while strengthening the criminal justice system.

“428 youths were trained this year and out of those from 20 communities, they had opportunities in relation to a number of technical training [programmes] and right now 62 of those received loans and have started their jobs. In 2018, in relation to the services of consultants for job readiness, we are going to train another 420 and that will continue until 2020,” Minister Ramjattan said.

In addition, the Minister said that several hundred youths will be trained in 2018 and families exposed to conflict resolution skills, as the Ministry through the CSSP continues to work to reduce community crime and violence.

“We are preparing for 2018, a number of at-risk youths to do work with families to strengthen their resilience and the use of solving problems of conflict. These are going to come from Regions Three, Four, Five, Six and 10 with skills to better resolve conflicts and promote positive parenting practices through a number of campaigns, workshops and family oriented activities. We have scheduled 21 of those in 2018,” the Minister told the National Assembly.

According to Minister Ramjattan, the CSSP with the Ministry’s efforts will also be doing literacy training, mentorship and psycho-social support to the families of these at-risk youths.

“This is yet another programme in collaboration with the Ministry of Education and certain other programmes to ensure that young people get training, get jobs and move away from the allure of criminality. I want to say that we have also set up the platform that is going to help in all these programmes by facilitating a minimum of 21 workshops and also 19 community officers have been appointed and have already started the work to deal with these young kids to prevent a cultivation of violence; to prevent them getting involved in bullying and anger management and in a way to give them improved self-esteem. I must say that this is very important because it is seeing a lot of improvements in those communities that they have started,” the Minister posited.

The Public Security Ministry is in line to receive $30.7B of the $267.1B budgetary estimates for 2018.

 

By: Kidackie Amsterdam

 

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