…the gold?
Who woulda thought the economy would be on life support now, after this Government took over. After all, Clive Thomas, the fella now heading SARU (that’s “State Asset Recovery Unit”, thank you!) swore the PPP was siphoning off 0M annually into its pockets. But that was said when the PPP was in office. Right after the APNU/AFC coalition took over, a government spokesman said the figure was actually 0B!!
And then a few months later, Minister of Natural Resources Raphael Trotman said THAT was only the MONEY stolen by the PPP. Oodles of gold were also being smuggled from the country and he announced a “Task Force” to coordinate efforts to staunch this yellow bleeding. In January of this new year, he put a figure to his smuggling claim – 15,000 ozs a week!! Now this is real money you’re talking about here. At even US00/oz, billion was leaving the country EVERY WEEK!! That’s 6B annually.
Now with Trotman’s Task Force, SARU and SOCU (Special Organised Crime Unit) and various and sundry law agencies, dozens of audits, just as many COIs on the money and gold trail, you’d think by now the bleeding would’ve been stopped and the country be flooded with funds. Stopping the 0M the PPP was “siphoning” and the 6B from the gold smugglers, the Government would have three times its annual budget to spend! Happy times should be here again, no?
No! Apart from charging poor Jenny Westford and her assistant, not a penny has been found of the 0M the PPP was supposed to be “siphoning”. And we still don’t know what’ll happen with Jenny’s case when it goes to trial. On the gold smuggling front, Trotman just revealed that the “Task Force” he established last year hasn’t met since then. But they’re working on the problem! We wonder if they’re still collecting salaries, since Trotman assured us the Task Force hasn’t been disbanded.
The Resources Minister (or is it the “resourceful” Minister, seeing as to how he hedged his bets at Nassau a decade ago?) also revealed that SOCU and SARU are taking the lead nowadays on the gold smuggling. Now it’s been nine months (40 weeks) since Trotman noted they were hot on the trail of the gold smugglers. By his figures some 600,000 ozs of gold worth US0,000,000 or 0B have been smuggled.
And what has SARU and SOCU done during all this time? Well, they did pull off that goldsmith Ramjit from a plane with 19 ozs of gold bling!
Hey! Don’t knock them. Nineteen ozs out of 600,000 ozs is a start, no?
…the crime fighter?
They say “cometh the hour, cometh the leader”. Well, after a slight blip, we seem to be heading into another “crime spiral”. And as happens with spirals, it’s never the same as before. The crimes committed in this round are eerily reminiscent of what went down at the beginning of the millennium.
Do folks remember Douglas and several others had protested prison conditions on the roof of the Camp Street Jail before their “Mashramani Five” breakout? Do folks remember just like today, when contraband smuggled into the prison became so common, it was only a notch higher when guns became available?
And do folks remember business people targeted for robberies? And then kidnappings? So where’s the leader to head off the barbarians at the pass? All eyes pan left to Minister of NATIONAL Security Khemraj Ramjattan, please!
He’s just put all our minds at rest by announcing he’s open to being persuaded to relax his 2 am curfew, come the Big Jubilee Bash!
What crime spiral?
…the drugs
So who’s fibbing? The staff of the GPHC, hospitals and clinics all across Guyana or the officials? The former, who’re treating and prescribing drugs to sick patients, say the commonest drugs are not available.
“Not so!” say the officials. So who’s fibbing – and why?
