Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Aug 24, 2014 APNU Column, Features / Columnists
Narcotics-trafficking in Guyana has been increasing over the past twenty years under the People’s Progressive Party Civic – PPPC – administration. Guyana’s entry into international ‘industrial scale’ narcotics-trafficking was signalled, spectacularly, in the October 1998 ‘discovery’ of 3,148 kg (about 6,940 pounds) of cocaine valued at US$288M on the MV Danielsen in Port Georgetown.
The December 2007 ‘discovery’ of the impressive 1,100m-long, illegal airstrip was another notorious event. A burnt-out Let 410 UVP-E turboprop aeroplane with a payload of 1,615 kg was found on the airstrip near Wanatoba, 130 km up the Corentyne River in the East Berbice-Corentyne Region. This demonstrated Guyana’s capability to import cocaine on an industrial scale by air.
The ‘discovery’ in mid-August this year of a Self-Propelled Semi-Submersible (SPSS) marine vessel in the Barima-Waini Region was yet another event. The vessel had the capacity to carry a payload of over a tonne of cocaine, demonstrating Guyana’s growing maritime narco-trafficking capability.
Revelations in the international media in February this year of the existence of a Guyana-Italy cocaine conspiracy were ominous. Evidence that Guyanese narco-traffickers were working hand-in-hand with Italian Mafiosi confirmed fears that Guyana, at the international level, had already established multi-lateral trade links and, nationally, it was on the way to full narco-statehood. This time, two dozen suspected narco-traffickers linked to the Gambino and Bonanno crime families and the Italian Ndrangheta crime syndicate were arrested in New York and Italy during a coordinated American-Italian Operation.
President Donald Ramotar is faced with reports of weekly drug busts at the international and municipal airports and elsewhere. He admitted to the United Nations General Assembly last September that the scourge of narco-trafficking has “…engendered a growth in criminal activity in our region. The availability of guns in many societies, most of which is [sic] a by-product of the narco-trade, has contributed to the growth of gun crimes and murders in the region and beyond.”
If the President knows this much, he must start to show leadership in his administration’s counter-narcotics policy-making. He must take command of the counter-narcotics battle. He must become personally involved in directing the campaign to rid this country of the scourge and stigma of the drug trade.
The US Department of State continues to warn – in its annual International Narcotics Control Strategy Report – that “Guyana is a trans-shipment point for South American cocaine on its way to North America and Europe.” This country, under the PPPC administration, has become a warehouse and an international emporium from which narco-traffickers export their merchandise to foreign markets. Hardly a month passes that cocaine is not discovered in shipments of condiments, fruit, food and vegetables – achar; awara; boulanger; coconut milk; mango; pineapple; rice; ochro; pepper; star-apples – and other commodities.
Guyana’s counter-narcotics enforcement agencies – Customs Anti-Narcotics Unit and Police Anti-Narcotics Unit – in the face of this trade, have been deliberately underfunded, underequipped and understaffed. They have never been provided with the surveillance aircraft, river and coastal patrol boats, all-terrain vehicles and trained personnel needed to secure the country’s international transit points, coasts and borders. They are incapable of locating, identifying, investigating and prosecuting the major drug cartels. It is no surprise that they have been unable to prevent the large-scale importation of illegal narcotics into the country. Their successes, if any, have been in preventing small amounts of cocaine from leaving the country.
The PPPC administration currently has no effective counter-narcotics strategy. The last plan – National Drug Strategy Master Plan, 2005-2009 – was never fully implemented. It expired five years ago and was never replaced. The Plan’s essential components – the National Anti-Narcotics Co-ordinating Secretariat; National Anti-Narcotics Commission; Joint Intelligence Co-ordination Centre; Joint Anti-Narcotics Committee and Regional Anti-Drugs Units — were never established. The ten Regional Anti-Drugs Units to provide information which could be passed to the Joint Intelligence Co-ordination Centre and Joint Anti-Narcotics Committee were never activated.
How serious can the President be about the PPPC’s war on drugs when he himself has not taken the trouble to establish the very Commission of which he is the designated Chairman? He, more than anyone else, ought to explain to the nation, why his administration’s main counter-narcotics strategy was allowed to expire without achieving its objectives and, so far, without replacement.
And so the deception continues. Clement Rohee, the Minister of Home Affairs, announced three and a half years ago, in January 2011, that “arrangements have commenced” for the formulation of a new five-year Drug Strategy Master Plan. He brazenly repeated the same bogus promise, two years ago in September 2012, stating that a new drug strategy master plan was being crafted by the government. This time he told uninformed foreigners that “our country is currently working assiduously to draft a new Drug Strategy Master Plan that would be used to guide our current and future Anti-Narcotics activities.”
President Ramotar must know that narco-trafficking has been driving this country’s high rates of money-laundering, gun-running, execution-murders and armed robberies. He must know that violent crime is scaring foreign investors, driving away the educated élite, undermining balanced economic growth, strangling legitimate manufacturing enterprise and impeding social development.
The President must know that ‘execution-type killings’ – many of which are suspected to be related to the narcotics-trafficking – account for about one-third of all murders. He must know that the lucrative narco-trade is estimated to contribute the equivalent of 20 per cent or more to Guyana’s GDP.
President Ramotar must know a lot about narco-trafficking in this country. He must therefore accept personal responsibility for the failure of the PPPC’s counter-narcotics campaign. He must make more than ‘limited’ promises. He must commit his administration absolutely to effective performance.
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
Apr 19, 2024
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