Someone is responsible for the Camp Street inferno that led to the total destruction of Guyana’s main prison, the escape of some of Guyana’s most notorious prisoners and the death of a prison officer, because there is ample evidence of negligence. David Granger insists that Ramjattan, the Minister responsible for the Camp Street Prison cannot be held responsible. He is unequivocally wrong. Minister Ramjattan is accountable for his sector. Ministerial responsibility is something that Ramjattan and the A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) preached throughout the 9th and 10th Parliaments between 2006 and 2015. Ministerial accountability, a sacred tenet of a democratic system, cannot be sacred only when it applies to the People’s Progressive Party (PPP), but become expendable when it applies to APNU/AFC. President Granger, Ramjattan and the APNU/AFC Cabinet stand indicted.
It has been more than a week since the Camp Street inferno. The inferno was the second time in less than 16 months that the Camp Street Prison has been subjected to a fiery assault. The first one killed 17 people. Yet no one is taking responsibility and no one is being held accountable. In fact, the President and the Minister adamantly dismiss any call for accountability. Most alarmingly, Granger and Ramjattan want people to give them credit because only one person died and only a handful escaped despite a horrendous inferno.
The excuses for the Camp Street inferno have been ludicrous. For example, they claim they did not have money. Yet Ramjattan’s 2017 Budget is about $10 billion more than Rohee’s 2014 budget for the security sector. In 2015, the public security sector operated with the largest budget ever at the time. In 2016 there was about a 20 per cent increase over the 2015 Budget and in 2017, another $6 billion was added to the budget. Therefore, it is asinine to argue that they did not have enough money. To say that the major cause of the Camp Street fiasco is lack of money is steaming garbage. The fact is they neglected the prison system and were too busy with political vendetta to worry about the prison system.
They had all the answers when they were in Opposition and they claimed Rohee had more than enough money. If Rohee had enough, Ramjattan is drowning in money. Granger knew the vulnerabilities since he served as a member of the Commission of Inquiry into the judicial system which examined the state of the prison system. In addition, after the first inferno at Camp Street 16 months ago, President Granger established a Commission of Inquiry. The report and recommendations have been with both Granger and Ramjattan and the whole Cabinet. But the state of the prison system has not changed in any measurable way since the first inferno and, therefore, whatever might have been the recommendations must have been ignored.
Not only have they made obnoxious excuses, they have also sought to hold former Minister Clement Rohee and the former PPP Government responsible. President Granger absurdly cast blame on a broken system he claimed Ramjattan inherited from the PPP. It boggles the mind that now in their third year in Government, they still want to cast blame on the PPP. Not only is this odious, it is treating the Guyanese people with absolute contempt. But let us not forget that Ramjattan also wants to hold the sugar workers accountable. He claimed within hours, while the inferno was still raging, that the reason why the prisoners were able to escape and why the prison was burning down was because APNU/AFC had to bail out sugar.
Sugar was merely the scapegoat for Ramjattan’s and APNU/AFC’s failure. How come they were short of money when they increased 200 taxes, when they discontinued the $10,000 per child in school grant and the water and electricity subsidies for the elderly? How come they increased their salaries up to 110 per cent over 2014 salaries? Where do they find money to rent homes for Ministers in excess of $500,000 per month? What about the continued $3 billion annual Linden electricity subsidy? What about the more than $170 million annually for a house to be used as a medical warehouse? What about the procurement of $200 million worth of medicines for more than $600 million? How come they suddenly access billions to expand Mazaruni and rebuild at Camp Street? For god sake, somebody is responsible for the neglect that led to the Camp Street inferno.
