The following is an update by Public Security Minister, Khemraj Ramjattan, on the National Security Meeting convened by President David Granger with the involvement several Ministers and the nation’s top security officials, earlier today (Monday).
The following excerpts were taken from DPI/GINA:
Minister of Public Security, Khemraj Ramjattan- “We have made some decisions on who will go to Mazaruni and how many will go to New Amsterdam and Timehri”.
“We are also in the process of getting Magistrates to be at Lusignan for the purposes of ensuring that those minor offences, those who were on bail but couldn’t afford it, make the arrangements for the granting of bail on their own recognizance so that we can shift some of them back to their homes. The arrangements are being put in place as we now speak. Six magistrates from six magisterial districts are working on that”.
“As to their comfort, it is going to be a bit tough, as you will appreciate”.
“We have been having some problems with the remands as they have been making claims for freedom and a number of other things”.
“We have to do a bit of networking as to giving the information to the relatives. This has to do with the humanitarian aspect of it. Relatives not only inside of Guyana but outside of Guyana”.
“We have Ministry of Public Infrastructure to help with the debris removal and that will take a couple of days”.
“We feel that we have accounted for all of the prisoners but that is to be verified, definitively by five o’clock this afternoon by the Director of Prisons”.
“We think that by another 72 hours, we should reduce the numbers from about a 1,000 there to about 450 by virtue of what we are doing administratively and by transfers.”
“We want to ensure that everyone out there is safe and that is our primary concern. We also want to ensure that prisoners are safe because they have their rights too notwithstanding they’re prisoners, notwithstanding their bad behavior of some of them. We are getting a number of them working along with us”
“It is a very complex set of arrangements that we have put in place to ensure the comfort of all and the capture of those that have escaped.”
“I want the people of Guyana to know that we have gotten things under control and it was a magnificent effort knowing very well the transportation of a thousand men, many of them hardcore prisoners on remand for very serious crimes. We managed to do peacefully and with a lot stability and security. That is a big plus in this ”
