By Jomo Paul
[www.inewsguyana.com] – The Government of Guyana and the United States on Friday November 06, signed an agreement for the provision of additional funds to boost anti-narcotic trafficking efforts.
Vice President and Foreign Affairs Minister Carl Greenidge signed the agreement with US Ambassador, Perry Holloway at the Ministry.
According to Greenidge, already the US government has committed over US$1M to Guyana under the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative and these additional funds will fall under that domain.
He stated that the funds will be used primarily to boost the capacity of the Customs and Anti-Narcotics Unit (CANU) and the Police Anti-Narcotics unit – which are soon to be merged.
Under this new agreement, an additional $350,000 will be provide for the program.
“This project is designed to enhance the capability of Guyana to conduct counter narcotics by developing correlation the agencies on intelligence gathering and drug trafficking,” said Greenidge.
He added “the long term goal is to ensure the quality and integrity of personnel assigned to CANU and to strengthen the investigative partnership between CANU and the DEA.”
Ambassador Holloway stated that the resources being made available will play a major role in training and equipping Guyana law enforcement agencies to enable them to expand their efforts to combat narcotics trafficking.
The Ambassador also related that efforts are on track to establish a permanent DEA Office in Guyana. He stated that while the date is set for January 2016, it may be tentative are operations may begin as early as December and as late as February.
He made it clear too that the DEA will not be acting as law enforcement officials in Guyana’s soil by carrying out arrests and conducting raids.
