Police Commissioner Henry Greene on Wednesday assured citizens that the security forces are fully prepared for the upcoming general and regional elections. Greene, speaking to reporters following the unveiling of a water cannon, said the Guyana Police Force is “well prepared” for the elections and will be protecting the ballot boxes, elections officials, observers among others so that law and order would be maintained.
Police Commissioner Henry Greene
“The security for elections is done by Joint Services: we are doing what we normally do, what we did five years ago making sure we have enough manpower, adequate vehicles, making sure we have adequate food stuff, sleeping accommodation so that ranks would be able to perform.”
“On Election Day, we will be escorting the ballot boxes, keeping the security of the ballot boxes. We will be having patrols of all the sectors; we have divided the country into sectors. We will also have visiting officers who will visit polling places to ensure that everything is okay, along with those who are on patrol staff. We will still have ranks at the station who will be doing station duties, we have ranks standing by, the ride units on standby also and we will be providing protection as normal but heightened because everybody is going to be in line or in barracks at least four, five days before elections,” Greene assured.
He dispelled reports that ranks within the Guyana Police Force were asked to submit their national identification cards to their superiors.
He said the Guyana Elections Commission (GECOM) in a verification process requested that the force verify the ranks on the list provided to the force.
“There is some misconception somewhere. GECOM gave us a list of persons to vote and asked us to verify this list – we had to get the ranks, this list included ID card numbers and we had to ask them to verify the numbers on the ID cards. Nobody was asked to bring in or hand in their ID cards, nothing of the sort. There is some misconception; it was part of the verification process for GECOM to ensure that on Monday persons on the list are registered and ready to vote,” Greene said.
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