The Disciplined Forces Commission report has concluded that the army, the police force and the prison and fire services have been unable to confront recent social disorder and secure the public's safety.
The report was presented in the National Assembly yesterday and includes 164 proposals for improving the forces' efficiency.
"Given their current resources, composition and capability, the forces seemed unable/and or unwilling/ reluctant to confront... the recent spate of social disorder and internal disturbance," says the commission in the 315-page report of its findings, after a ten-month review of the forces.
It concluded that both internal and external changes have impacted upon their operations, while the needed legislative, organisational and administrative changes have not been made.
The report says, "Public safety and national security have suffered as a consequence," and recommends the development of a National Security Reform Programme to address the deficiency of the forces to enable them to cope with the challenges.
Ethnic balancing in the forces, though secondary, was one of the most important and contentious areas, that was examined by the commission.
It found no evidence of deliberate discrimination, but felt that no conscious initiative was taken to improve on unimaginative, dated and worn procedures. It says this resulted in potential recruits from certain geographic areas or of certain ethnic groups being disadvantaged or inadvertently ignored. It is for this reason that the report says recruitment, retention and promotion, and all matters affecting personnel should be entirely re-examined.
The commission says in its conclusion, "the evidence reveals that existing procedures, based on traditional population centres and the lack of multi-ethnic recruitment and promotion panels are unlikely to produce results which are satisfactory to the majority of the population. Greater ethnic balance is both desirable and achievable with the adoption of new approaches."
The commission was chaired by Justice of Appeal Ian Chang SC and its other members were former attorney general Charles Ramson SC, attorney Anil Nandlall, former brigadier David Granger and Professor Harold Lutchman. He replaced Irish human rights activist Maggie Beirne who resigned in December after the commission completed its interim report on the police force.
In its ten months of work the commission received 163 submissions, received oral testimony from 97 witnesses and also visited eight selected installations of the four forces, including the Brickdam and Lethem police stations, the Coast Guard and Air Corps Headquarters, the Georgetown, New Amsterdam and Mazaruni prisons and the Fire Service Headquarters.
The Army
Central in the recommendations for the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) is the need for an increase in manpower in the Coast Guard and Air Corps units. The commission also recognises the need for incentives to attract reservists, in the light of the need for a reserve force in regions along the coastlines or international borders; though it is stipulated that there is need for reservists with academic qualifications and skills.
The report says the Defence Board should seriously review the support given to the Coast Guard, which must be financed to conduct long-range maritime patrols.
The commission points out that the present international security climate warrants greater emphasis on the coast guard, and the GDF needs to re-conceptualise its functions and operations to give effect to this new strategic reality. Also, the GDF's proposals of outlining a National Security Strategy ought to be adopted and treated as priority.
The acquisition of inshore vessels is called for, to enable the suppression of illegal fishing, narco-trafficking gun-running, illegal migration and contraband smuggling. The need to suppress smuggling in the Corentyne area is specifically cited. Similarly, there is representation for improved aerial surveillance, which the commission feels could be increased in coastal maritime and border operations.
Improved surveillance, necessitating reconnaissance/surveillance aircraft, the commission thinks, should be significantly improved through re-capitalisation efforts, including the completion of repairs to its helicopter and one of two Skyvans. Also, adequate arrangements are recommended for recruitment as well as local and overseas training of pilots and engineers and retention of the service of skilled personnel.
The report says any resulting benefits from employing the Air Corps as a revenue-earning arm of the force should be compared with the benefits accrued to the country from the interdiction of contraband activities and the detection of illegal fishing.
Joint operations and internal security
The commission says the role of the army in the maintenance of internal order with the police force and other civilian agencies needs to be seriously considered by the Defence Board. The army's role in the joint campaign with the police force in Buxton was severely criticised in public and before the commission. Head of the Presidential Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon went as far as to tell the commission that the operation identified significant flaws in the joint service concept. He posited that had this been known beforehand, government might not have thrown its weight behind the campaign, which failed to stem the tide of an unprecedented wave of crime between 2002 and 2003. One of the principal weaknesses cited was the murkiness of the jurisdiction of army personnel in relation to the police. This also had significant implications for criminal prosecution, where there were arrests by soldiers, for example.
The report addresses this issue by recommending that members of the GDF be conferred with powers of arrest and detention, albeit limited to occasions for maintaining public order.
The fire service
The changing challenges and circumstances relating to fire-fighting is highlighted in the report, which says the Home Affairs Minister should do a needs assessment for the fire service in the light of these developments. These include an increase in high-rise buildings throughout the country in densely populated areas and widespread electrification with limited safety systems for transmission and generation.
But, even more significantly, given two catastrophic fires within the last six months, the report says the minister should use his office to ensure that fire hydrants are supplied with adequate water for fire-fighting purposes. It also points out that the issue of who bears responsibility for fire hydrants should be resolved. This has been an issue of contention between the fire service, the town council and the water company which defer responsibility among themselves.
"It is lamentable that, out of a total of about 580 fire hydrants located in the city of Georgetown, fewer than 90 are functional," the commission notes in the report.
It calls this an unsatisfactory state of affairs which needs to be resolved.
Additional fire stations have also been proposed to serve areas between Ogle and Rosignol and Georgetown and Timehri, where there is density of housing and population, owing to the development of housing schemes and industries in recent years. The report suggests that the communities that benefit from the stations should bear, in part, their maintenance costs.
Evidence of the high risk of damage that is likely in the absence of a fireboat was also received by the commission, which has asked that the government acquire two fireboats, or at least one in the short term. It is noted that if there is a major fire either on a wharf or a ship or vessel moored nearby, the fire service would be either severely or totally handicapped.
The prisons
The commission notes that as the prison population increases, there ought to be an increase in the authorised strength of the system's security personnel, while monitoring devices and warning technology should be installed and upgraded in the corrective institutions.
Although the prison service did not cite the staff shortage as one of its key deficiencies, the commission says that the actual staff of 369 prison officers reflects a deficit of 83. But the service manages to offset this shortage by using assistant prison officers, an auxiliary post created in the absence of suitably qualified security personnel.
However, the report says there is potential danger in this practice as persons are presumably being recruited out of necessity, though they do not satisfy the qualifications criteria.
"The commission is concerned that if this practice is allowed to continue, the quality of security personnel of the GPS can become consistently diluted..." the report says.
"Undoubtedly, such practices will impact negatively on the basic training programme of the GPS..." it adds, explaining that it was not surprising when the service reported the biggest challenge to its training programme is the recruitment of people with the needed qualifications.
The report's primary recommendations to rectify this development are increasing the salary and other benefits given to prison officers to attract suitably qualified applicants. Also, there are proposals for the installation of monitoring devices and warning technology in the Georgetown, New Amsterdam and Mazaruni prisons, given the increase in the number of violent prisoners who pose a threat to both inmates and prison staff. The February 2002 escapees are cited as an example.
And while the Prison Act does provide for the use of firearms as far as possible to disable rather than kill, the commission says guns given to prison officers should be restricted to those which can be employed discriminately in target selection. It stresses too the need for periodic checks of prisoners and prisons for weapons, implements for breaking out and other unauthorised items. At least one witness told the commission that prisoners freely sell drugs inside the prison. He said too that some would fashion weapons for themselves.
The report also addresses overcrowding in the prisons, endorsing the recommendations of the Criminal Law Review Committee, which had proposed an active Parole Board and the greater use of community service and suspended sentences by the criminal courts to alleviate the problem.
The development of a constructive regime of activities to occupy prisoners' time, such as masonry, carpentry, joinery, agriculture, is advised for prisoner rehabilitation. This is also to minimise abuses and negative influences.
The need for daily visits by medical officers in keeping with the law, was another of the key proposals of the report.
The police force
The commission's recommendations for the reform of the police force are unchanged, save for some minor additions. Though concerns about some proposals were expressed in the period between the release of the interim report and the production of the final report. These included concerns which were raised by Beirne, who resigned from the commission upon the completion of the police report.
There are 71 recommendations for the police force to improve its functions and operations, structure, its recruitment policies to achieve ethnic balance and the force's accountability to civilian authorities. There are also detailed proposals looking at extra-judicial killings, community policing groups, the operation of the Firearms Act and the Coroner's Act. Some of the proposals include disarming police ranks who do not demonstrate a high degree of responsibility; the development of policies to induce the retention of all ethnicities in the force; the repeal of legislation for the appointment of supernumerary policemen; and the establishment of a Parliamentary Commission on Public Safety.
One key addition is a proposal for some legislative framework to legitimise the practice of community policing to ensure that such functions are institutionalised, strictly supervised and monitored.
The recommendations had been of concern to Beirne and more recently, Mike McCormack of the Guyana Human Rights Association (GHRA) and attorney Raphael Trotman of the PNCR, who described them as weak. Trotman had cited specifically the absence of a legislative oversight to guide these groups.
Some general reservations have also been expressed about the grant of gun licences under the Firearms Act, especially in the face of more recent revelations about liberal grants to suspicious individuals.
The report's proposals in this regard have been described as placid and they remain unchanged.
The interim report was presented to the National Assembly December last year, but was not debated before the completion of the final report. This was despite a request from the commission that the Assembly ask the government to formulate a five-year reform plan for the police force to inform its final recommendations. Nothing was done, while the commission continued work on the final report, which Chang said may have benefited from the silence, since it allowed the commissioners to approach their work with an open mind.