To improve the quality of training provided by the various Police colleges across Guyana, the Guyana Police Force (GPF) has partnered with the University of Guyana (UG) to launch a course that will equip them with better instructional training skills.
On Monday, the Force in collaboration with the tertiary institution and the Centre of Excellence for Teaching and Learning (CoETaL) launched its “Train the Trainers” course that will see some 75 shortlisted ranks being trained on how to implement and execute instructional skills.
Deputy Commissioner of Police, Calvin Brutus at the launching event admitted that the quality of training being offered by the GPF has been lacking in standards over the years. He said that this is what prompted the Force to work with UG to execute the course.
“This came about when we took up the helm of the Guyana Police Force. We did analysis of many reports that were submitted to us in the past including the China’s Commission, the Russel Combs’ report, previous strategic plans and we’ve done an analysis of the instructors that we have at our colleges, other staff present working there, our IT infrastructure, and generally the quality of the training that we provide at the college. While we’ve been doing this for quite a number of years, for some reason we’ve fallen away in terms of the quality of training that we provide for our staff,” Brutus said.
He further stated that the Force’s aim is to improve the quality of policemen and women in the next 5 to 10 years. He also revealed that the training being offered by the Force is not sufficient enough to equip officers with the knowledge of how to execute their jobs.
“What we have found, based on our analysis, is that the training that we’ve produced to our recruits and our staff is not sufficient information for them to fully understand the duties and the responsibilities as Police in Guyana.
“The use of force seems to be one of the areas that we’re lagging behind, and in that regard, many of the locations and even some individual members are now currently blacklisted by the US State Department. Training is one area that will assist us to get beyond the blacklisting so that we can benefit in closer collaborations with the US Embassy.”
The course seeks to enable the ranks to administer the necessary training to the batch of 700 new recruits of the GPF that will commence training in May.
The course will be broken down into three different sections. The first part of the course will be Instructional Design and will be taught from March 2 through March 8.
The second part, Instructional Delivery, will be taught from March 9 through March 11, with the final part of the course, Assessments being taught from March 12 through March 16.
The course is a micro credit course that will be accredited by UG.
