Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Dr. Irfaan Ali, today charged the Guyana Police Force (GPF) members to give their best in service to the Guyanese people while underscoring the need for structural changes going forward.
The Head of State, who was at the time addressing the GPF’s Annual Conference at the National Cultural Centre, emphasised the requirements to advance the Force’s mandate. He explained that the Force must undertake restructuring, repositioning, rebranding, reorganising, retooling, reengineering, and repairing of its image and service delivery.
“Guyana’s future is going to change; are we preparing ourselves for that change? Or are we transiting at a normal pace to what the future requires us to be? If we are doing that, we are marking time.”
The President said that change is necessary with our overall development and pointed to the benefits of structured transformation to the Force. He noted that change is a systematic process and that the priority is for the Lawmen to understand their current position against where they ought to be.
Such an analysis, he added, would result in identifying the gaps in the Force, both external and internal.
“In doing this, we then have to do a realistic assessment of our capability, our weaknesses, our strength, the opportunities that are there, the direction in which the country is going, and the Force is going. And the requirement and the future demands of the Force.”
As a result of this, he stressed that regionalisation and strengthening of regional capacity must be scrutinised.
The President spoke about the possibilities of having “specialised units” in every region to support the regular team, especially in terms of major crime. He said his vision is to have all the regions armed with self-sufficient units to mitigate and investigate all levels of crime.
To achieve this, capacity must be increased and built within the regions. It must not be a top-down, top-heavy approach, but an integrated one with optimal execution at all levels.
In restructuring the organisation, the Head of State noted that the overall goal has to be efficiency, effectiveness, and responsiveness with the clarity of a single vision.
“No individual or group is running a separate arm of the Force. There must be one common vision, one approach- a singular approach that is only confined to service to the people. Very important, the clarity of vision, the clarity of purpose, the clarity of action, he said.
