Social Protection Ministry awaits report before acting on NOC breakout

– claims it’s clueless at this point

Investigations into the breakout at the New Opportunity Corps at Onderneeming Village, Region Two (Pomeroon-Supenaam) are still ongoing and at this point, the Social Protection Ministry is still to determine what went wrong.

According to the Ministry, it is only when these investigations have concluded that measures can be implemented to correct this situation as well as prevent a recurrence.
Guyana Times was told that a report on the incident where the 24 juveniles escaped from the facility on Saturday last is expected to be completed by Friday and shortly after it will be presented to Social Protection Minister Amna Ally for guidance on the way forward.
Meanwhile, the police are still conducting their investigations into the matter as well.
The juvenile offenders made good their escape on Saturday around 19:30h after climbing down from the southern window in their dormitory. Some juvenile offenders then climbed over a fence and made a dash for freedom while another group used the koker entrance which is currently dried as a result of the dry season. Of the 24 escapees, there were 17 males and seven females.
Although the facility is equipped with security officers, the teen offenders managed to outsmart them.
Meanwhile, police have since said that investigations revealed that the females opened a southern door in their dormitory and tied five sheets together then threw the knotted sheets over the western fence of the compound in order to escape.
Police in G Division (Essequibo Coast-Islands) have since managed to recapture 16 of the escapees with a few of them voluntarily returning to the facility. Several others are still on the run. Police are seeking the assistance of the public in recapturing the others.

In November 2018, a search was launched for five female juvenile offenders who escaped from the facility.
That incident followed a number of other incidents wherein inmates tried to flee the holding facility. On October 18, a 17-year-old juvenile offender from New Amsterdam, Berbice, pushed down a social service assistant and escaped.
The teen was sent to the juvenile correctional facility to serve a three-year sentence on a charge of break-and-enter and larceny.
Reports are that the teen was being escorted back to his dorm when he pushed the 61-year-old social service assistant to the ground and ran west, out of the compound and into an area covered with high vegetation and made good his escape.
Meanwhile, a few weeks prior to that incident, 13 persons managed to escape from the facility in another such incident. This publication understands that 10 of the teens escaped on September 27, 2018, and the other three escaped on September 28, 2018.
The juveniles had completed some chores in the compound of the facility after which they started to run towards the western side of the premises which is not fenced.
Since the coalition Government came into power, responsibility for the NOC has been assigned to the Social Protection Ministry.