By Svetlana Marshall

The Annual Police Officers Conference opened this morning with President Irfaan Ali announcing plans to advance security at the country’s ports with the use fully digitized scanners.

While addressing Law Enforcement Officers at Police Headquarters, Eve Leary, the President said the Government is partnering with the US Government to roll out the initiative that will improve “traceability” and “accountability” at the country’s ports, including at the airports and wharves.

“The next phase of advancement at our ports, and we are working with the US on this, is to have a fully digitized scanner systems for everything that is coming in and going out. So, we are going to remove the burden on our human capacity, and we’re going to have scanners at all our ports for every single thing that is going in and coming out, with traceability, accountability and also with storage capacity, so that we can have better security and better management of our border system,” the Head of State said.

The President said the Government will also push to enhance existing legislation to support stiffer penalties for those who are bent on breaching Customs and Immigration Laws.

“With that will come enhance legislation that would see higher fines, higher fines for persons who would not correctly declare what is in their bags, going in and coming out. So, the burden, the burden of responsibility, legislatively, will be shifted more to people, because partnership is about people, and people must take responsibility for their action. So, you’ll see stringent legislation, higher fines, and also greater penalties for persons who will try to cheat the system or beat the system,” President Ali said.

According to the President, the investment in improved security systems at the country’s ports form part of the Government’s efforts to capitalize on the use of technology to better improve public systems through prudent investments.

President Ali said investments in technology have already yielded success with criminal activities in Bourda, Stabroek and along the Kingston Seawall already on the decline as a result of the installation of electronic monitors with cameras.

“We have placed large screen, large screens with cameras, so that you can see yourself and everything you’re doing on television, and that has significantly reduced crime in those areas, significantly, significantly reduced crime in this those areas, because we are all looking out for each other,” he said.

He said the country has recorded a 12.2% reduction in serious crimes, and a 25.9% decline in murders, while robberies have fallen by 40.9%.

President Ali said the Government is adopting a scientific-data driven approach to crime fighting using technology.

“So, data accumulation of data, analysis of data, quality of data, these are all important issues that we are addressing to develop an effective crime fighting mechanism. So, data sets, understanding data sets, analyzing data sets, and that is why we’re training our police officers in all of these areas so that they will be able to use the data. They will be able to do the type of analysis that is required. They will be able to develop policing techniques based on these investments that we’re making,” the President explained.

Noting that Government is not acting in a vacuum, President Ali further explained that Police Ranks are being trained in a number of specialized areas including cyber security and forensic science.

In 2024, more than 1,400 ranks underwent specialized training at a cost of $250M, and another 1,700 ranks are expected to be trained this year.

Of the $34.3B allocated to the Guyana Police Force through the 2025 Budget, $2B has been set aside to upgrade the Force’s transportation fleet, the President also announced.

“We’re going to be investing in a system, a system that will ring fence our assets so that our assets cannot go on other rides except operational rides. That’s important because we have to safeguard our assets. We will have GPS mapping and tracking of our assets, so that we will know when we invest $2 billion in our assets and the public call, and we know we have five vehicles within five minutes of where that call is coming from, and none of the assets move, we will know where they were, what they were doing, and then we’ll have to hold people accountable as to why they did not respond,” the President said.

President Ali also used the opportunity to applaud the Minister of Home Affairs, Robeson Benn and his Ministry on the launch of its nationwide campaign, encouraging Guyanese to “Do the Right Thing”.

The Police Officers Conference will wrap up this weekend.

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