This nation is certainly in need of a moral reckoning. Guyanese of all strata, creed and colour must agree that its citizens do not deserve to die suddenly and violently by bullets. Nor deserve to see their families, friends and neighbours pierced and punctured by bullets.
Yet once again the Alliance For Change (AFC) sees another Guyanese, Jairam Ramkishun, 69 of Westminster Housing Scheme WBD shot and killed on Sunday in an attempted robbery. Only too recently, Evelyn Alves was shot dead in the head, execution style, at Diamond EBD.
The AFC offers its condolences to the bereaved families of these murder victims but asserts that we all must be outraged when such shootings and killings occur, especially with the regularity within recent times. We seem to have become numb to it all. We, however, should take to the Press, social media, and streets demanding that Government and our enforcement actors diagnose carefully why this increase in shootings and killings, and prognose the treatment for its reduction if not its elimination.
The AFC is aware that much work was done under the Citizen Security and Strengthening Program and the British Security Sector Reform Program. Implementation of the recommendations undoubtedly have ceased or have been shelved.
To be sustainably successful in reducing gun violence, the Enforcement actors, primarily the Guyana Police Force (GPF), must craft appropriate evidence-based and community-informed solutions. The Government and the Enforcement actors involved must have a handle on who is committing the violence, where they are committing it, and why. The well-known tools to identify that small cohort of especially young men most likely to shoot or be shot must be employed. Crime mapping to identify where the hotspots are concentrated must be scrupulously done and shared with the public, along with the disaggregated weekly statistics of serious crimes. Government and the Police must combine data and human intelligence to understand the dynamics of this high-end lethal violence with an emphasis to discover the proximate and root causes.
The Alliance For Change believes that budgetary allocations for a better security for all Guyana must be structured to target especially this increase in gun crimes. Devoting additional resources to curb gun violence and murders is affordable by any budgetary standard, especially if compared to the costs of the loss of lives and limbs, the medical costs, the criminal justice costs, lost earnings, the reduced quality of life and so many consequential costs of the violence. But it must be funds allocated specifically for this purpose: reduction of shooting and killing.
The GPF and the Ministry of Home Affairs must thereafter provide progress reports showing that the monies are being spent on the people, places and behaviours that have been identified as driving this gun violence.
Sadly, our GPF these days, especially some in its Officer corp, seems to be far removed from these core functions and progressive activities. As a nation we will be worse for it.
