Security in the gold mining sector: The Arimu Backdam murders
The fact that two gold miners, Donavan Washington and Zaheer Mohammed Sherriff had their lives violently taken on Sunday, at Arimu Backdam in Region Seven, while they were transporting gold from one location to another, provides yet another poignant example that illustrates the dimensions of cold and ruthless criminal activity that continues to target sections of the business community in Guyana. The targeting of gold miners, believed to be moving significant quantities of gold across remote parts of the country, is part of a wider problem of bandits targeting what they believe to be the vulnerable sections of the business community as a whole.
One of the things that the authorities now have to understand is that the oil-driven new-found wealth that manifests itself in a continually transforming business environment requires responses in the country’s overall security infrastructure to take account of the fact that criminals as much as legitimate entrepreneurial types would be keen to take advantage of the fast transforming environment. Whether or not law enforcement has fashioned a strategic plan tailored to take account of the enhanced security needs of the business community is not something that the public would necessarily be aware of though it is not uncommon to hear comments emanating from the business community which suggests that it places no great faith in conventional law enforcement.
Certainly, one of features of what we now loosely describe as our ‘oil economy’ has been the emergence of a plethora of new enterprises offering security services as well as pre-existing ones that are offering services that appear to be extended to suit the circumstances of the day. Whilst all this is occurring, the image of the Guyana Police Force continues to be eroded by circumstances which are due, palpably, to on-theground underperformance and to what some members of the Force say has been the seeming inability of the Force’s high command to change with the times. Indeed, it often does not appear that state-controlled law enforcement possesses an effective response to what now appear to be the several law and order anomalies confronting the country.
As our much talked-about ‘oil money’ begins to manifest itself in the society, in various ways, the impact of this on the society as a whole and on the business sector, in particular, becomes increasingly evident. As has already been mentioned, what the acceleration of business-related activity has also done is to open up fresh craters of access to an already pre-existing and flourishing crime ‘sector’. Here, it is altogether fair to make the point that given what have been clear indications that entrepreneurship of various types continues to grow, law enforcement, not least the Guyana Police Force, is compelled to raise its own ‘game.’ The reality is that public perceptions (including criminal perceptions) of the GPF has given rise to the popular view that unless we significantly raise our public security ‘game’ the promise of a thriving ‘petro economy’ might well become seriously compromised by an uncontrollable surge in daring, ruthless and ‘high risk’ types of criminal activity that will become more selective in their targeting of potential victims.
This is a circumstance that both the government and the private sector, alike, are going to have to face, down the road and needless to say, potential investors themselves have something to say about crime and security in our ‘investment haven.’ We have now witnessed more than sufficient to cause us to realize that the GPF and the various other state-run public security entities are leagues away from being ‘up with’ the expanding frontiers of criminal activity. The reality here is that where effective fighting crime is concerned,