The Social Partners grouping has gotten positive feedback from the government, the PPP/C and the PNC/R on proposals to halt the crime wave.
Spokesperson for the grouping, Private Sector Commission chairman, Dr Peter de Groot told Stabroek News yesterday that so far all the groups they have met have expressed general concurrence with the proposals. He said that the next step would be the drafting of a communiqué to which the parties would subscribe.
The social partners discussed the proposals with the PNC/R on Friday, the PPP/ Civic on Tuesday and with President Bharrat Jagdeo and representatives of the government, including Secretary to the Defence Board, Cabinet Secretary, Dr Roger Luncheon yesterday.
Though reluctant to discuss in detail their positions on the proposals, spokespersons for the parties and government all described their meeting with the grouping as fruitful and productive.
PNC/R general secretary, Oscar Clarke, told Stabroek News that his party had no real disagreement with the proposals since they accord with what it has been calling for these past several months. However, he said that it was disappointed that there wasn't more emphasis on the impact of the drug trade.
He said that the PNC/R did not believe that the crime situation could be dealt with in isolation from the general issue of governance, which it feels is necessary to create the degree of trust that would allow for a national consensus on the measures to deal with the present crime situation.
Its concerns notwithstanding, Clarke says that the PNC/R is committed to the engagement with the grouping.
His PPP/C counterpart, Donald Ramotar, also described the meeting as fruitful, saying yesterday that he had put forward his party's position on some of the proposals which the social partner representatives seem to appreciate.
Cabinet Secretary, Dr Luncheon, who left the meeting to conduct his regular weekly press briefings described the proposals as very comprehensive and said they should lead to the evolution of a national consensus on the measures to be adopted to deal with the present crime wave.
He added that Cabinet had reviewed the paper on the current security environment, which proposes the engagement of the government, the parliamentary political parties and civil society organisations in developing a mass-based comprehensive response to the current crime situation.
At the request of the Social Partners, former Chiefs of Staff of the Guyana Defence Force, Major Generals, Nor-man McLean and Joe Singh and former Commissioner of Police Laurie Lewis, in their individual capacities, developed the proposals which have been the basis of the discussions with the PNC/R, the PPP/C and President Jagdeo.
The Social Partners comprise the Private Sector Commission the Trades Union Congress and the Guyana Bar Association. They have undertaken an initiative to ensure implementation of Article 13 of the Constitution which provides for civil society to take an active part in decision making.