Police intelligence network gets $165m

On Thursday, the National Assembly approved an $18 billion budget for the Ministry of Public Security. Included in this sum was $15 billion for current expenditure of which $165 million has been allocated for the extension and improvement of the Guyana Police Force’s Intelligence Network.

Responding to a question from Opposition Parliamentarian Anil Nandlall, Minister of Public Security Khemraj Ramjattan stated that $165 million under line item 6284-Other is for the re-engineering of the intelligence capacity of the force.

“The intelligence capacity of the organisation is important and vital to it and the force has sought to have some re-engineering done in relation to the intelligence capacity. The undertaking has received a boost from the Jamaica Constabulary Force and this is what the expenditure going towards,” Ramjattan stated.

He further explained that the crime intelligence and security intelligence network is what caused a $10 million increase in the allocation for informant funding and information protection.

“If someone steals something and an informer is going to indicate who stole, there are times when you have to pay up the informant and it [the allocation] is for informant funding …. and information protection. We have to now have all this information protected and the protection has a cost,” Ramjattan told the house.

He also noted that the GPF is seeking to spread its intelligence network nationally.

“We want to spread nationally to the extent that we can always go back and find the information and the informant that could have helped and all of that and that is to make the force a far greater force than it is right now,” Minister Ramjattan told the house.