Security sector to be further enhanced

─Better pay and equipment for Joint Services

─Upgrade the Emergency Response System

─All capital towns to get Safe City Project

DPI, Guyana, Monday, February 17, 2020

The Coalition Government has announced plans to implement measures that will significantly boost public security over the next ten years. These were unveiled in the Coalition’s manifesto launch on February 14.

Among these steps is the modernising of police stations by equipping them with the necessary technology. The outfitting of police vehicles with on-board computers and communications equipment linked to a command centre.

Training of police ranks will be further expanded in specialist areas such as prosecution, financial crimes, fraud, cyber-crime and identity theft.  And officers in the field will be equipped with modern body-armour, taser guns, body-radios and body-cameras.

Information gathering, a key component of policing, will be boosted with the strengthening of intelligence and counter-intelligence forces in the Defence and Police Forces.

Also, on the cards is the further upgrade of the Emergency Response System with the appropriate technology and the expansion of the Safe City Pilot Project to other towns.

Ensuring professionalism in the police force by thoroughly investigating complaints against officers and taking the necessary action required.

Also highlighted was the completion of a modern prison at Mazaruni, Region Seven. No.7.

The move initiated several years before, to build trust within local communities, will be enhanced with the bolstering of Community Policing Groups, implementation of the Juvenile Justice Act and the entrepreneurship programme for at-risk youths.

To make policing more attractive to young people and to create a better-educated force, the Coalition plans to establish a new National Police Academy with regional branches.

To safeguard national sovereignty, the Guyana Peoples’ Militia will be expanded providing a ready national reserve and job training for youths. They will be supplemented by a Guyana Defence Force equipped to protect the country’s borders and Maritime Zone.

Plans were also announced to protect citizenship and sustain measures to monitor immigration, migration, deportation, birth registration, issuance of national passports and combat human trafficking.  Strengthening the Foreign Service to extend protection to Guyanese citizens wherever they reside and deepen regional, hemispheric and international partnerships to secure and maintain Guyana’s territorial integrity.