Government addressing crime with forensics scholarships, expansion of Smart city program –VP

Vice President, Hon. Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo said the Government is very concerned about what its statistics indicate about the crime rate, and will address it through multiple interventions.

Dr. Jagdeo made this statement during a press conference at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre on Friday.

“What we are looking at now is resuscitating the Smart city programme… It’s in chaos and it’s limited to 265 cameras, but taking this across the country with a capability of monitoring and operating it so you can see what’s going on.”

The Vice President said while this would help fight crime, new privacy laws, among other interventions, would be needed to implement and apply this law enforcement tool.

The surveillance system was installed in areas around Georgetown in 2019.

Dr. Jagdeo also spoke about the interventions included in the Guyana Online Academy of Learning (GOAL) scholarship initiative.

“Under this scholarship programme, we are building to identify at least maybe 100 programmes. If you look at the scholarships on offer, a lot of them are for forensic science and stuff like that, to ensure that we can better populate the forensic lab, the facilities that will be built.”

The GOAL programme offers many diplomas and post graduate diplomas from the Sherlock Institute of India, in over 20 areas of study related to investigative law enforcement work. The programmes can be viewed at https://www.guyanagoal.org/.

In addition, the Vice President said 40 new vehicles will be coming in next month to equip the Guyana Police Force, and that training of its staff will also be crucial for the force to tackle serious crime.

The Government is also working with its international partners on drug enforcement and transnational crime.

Dr. Jagdeo noted that the Police have been asked to provide regular statistical updates on the crime situation to the media, so that they can keep the country abreast.