Security at Mazaruni Prison should be beefed up – PSC

If the Mazaruni Prison is to be used as Guyana’s premier prison to house high- profile convicts, then security would have to be beefed up to unprecedented levels, as the location is vulnerable.
This is according to the Private Sector Commission’s (PSC’s) Security Liaison, Captain (retd) Gerry Gouveia.

Gouveia expressed support for the suggestion that the stone section at the Camp Street Prison, the lone surviving section of the July 9 prison fire, be used for remand purposes. However, he recommended that measures – including the installation of dogs and surveillance equipment – be utilised at the Mazaruni facility, where a multi-million-dollar extension is ongoing.
“We support the President’s call that the Georgetown Prison should be a remand centre,” Gouveia said. “It’s close to the court system, (and) I’ve always believed that the Mazaruni Prison certainly (has) the potential to be a high security prison.”
He added, “But in planning and doing it, they have to understand that the Mazaruni Prison is vulnerable, not only to breaking-outs, but breaking-ins,” the airline executive stressed.
“So, if you have high-profile prisoners in that prison, that prison becomes very vulnerable,” he cautioned.
Describing ways in which the underbelly of operations at the prison might be exposed to break-outs and break-ins, Gouveia reminded that the Mazaruni prison is on the mainland, and not on an island. He also identified specific vulnerable areas.
“And so they have to ensure the security system have dogs, cameras, ATVs (all-terrain vehicles) and drones. And then, of course, the Mazaruni Prison is in the middle of one of our tourism regions — in the Bartica area. So we have to be very thoughtful when we’re doing these things, because tourism is going to be one of (the) major economic pillars of our development,” Gouveia said.
There are plans for the phased construction of a four-storey prison as part of the expansion at Mazaruni. Construction is scheduled to start this year.
Public Security Minister Khemraj Ramjattan had said in a recent press briefing that building a new prison could end up costing the Government $6 billion. But after the completion of the prison design by VIKAB Engineering Consultants Ltd, the first phase of building the prison at Mazaruni will commence.
In March last year, a fire that raged through the Camp Street Prison had claimed the lives of 17 prisoners. A Commission of Inquiry, which eventually cost the treasury some $13 million, was ordered by President David Granger.
According to the report compiled by those commissioners, overcrowded, uncomfortable and unhygienic confinement creates ideal conditions for epidemics, for gangs to prosper, and for discontent to be propagated.
Moreover, the CoI found that reducing numbers in prison to manageable levels is the single most important priority for establishing safe, humane and purposeful prisons.
But one of the most disturbing findings of the CoI was that the ratio of officers to prisoners constituted a truly disturbing number of gate-keepers to guard Guyana’s most dangerous felons – 10 officers were guarding 1000 prisoners.