The Alliance For Change (AFC) says that Guuanese must express outrage and condemnation of yet another shooting and killing and demand more from Government and the Guyana Police Force.
The party, in a recent missive to the media, said that the 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,” the party said.
The AFC expressed concern over the killing of Jairam Ramkishun, 69, of Westminster Housing Scheme, West Bank Demerara, (WBD), who was shot and killed on Sunday in an attempted robbery. Members of his family were also injured.
“Only too recently, Evelyn Alves was shot dead in the head, execution style, at Diamond. 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 numbed to it all,” the AFC lamented.
It added, “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 noted that much work was done under the Citizen Security and Strengthening Program and the British Security Sector Reform Program, however, hastened to add that implementation of the recommendations have “undoubtedly 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 party suggested.
Further, the AFC noted that 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.
Additionally, it said that the 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 party stated.