Architecture of drug fight to undergo changes- Harmon

The fight against the illegal drug trade will be intensified locally with the establishment of a National Anti-Narcotics Agency which will see greater levels of coordination among the relevant agencies.

And according to State Minister, Joseph Harmon, “the drug dealers out there can be assured that the government is going to take a firm stance on the matter because we are going to increase the coordination of these agencies, as you know there are at least three agencies involved, you have CANU, you have the Guyana Revenue Authority, you have the Guyana Police Force Anti-Narcotics Agency …so you need some coordination of the activities of these entities if you are to ensure that the fight against drugs in intensified.”

In response to a question posed, Harmon assured that President David Granger is very serious about the drug fight and meets weekly with the Public Security Minister who updates him about the work of all the agencies. “The president doesn’t have to meet with all these heads he meets with the Minister of Public Security on a weekly basis and what is happening now is that a drug strategy master plan is now out there which will have national consultation and we are basically going to move in a direction of enforcing those conditions under the drug strategy master plan,” he noted.

 As part of the agenda of the National Security Committee meeting, the Minister said a weekly report on drugs is also submitted.

Meanwhile, the State Minister said the Dataram report has been submitted to the Public Security Minister, who will decide when the findings would be made public, since it contains sensitive information. “I think it’s a matter of how you treat with the information there as it would affect reputations, persons who are in office and so on because these are allegations against public officials and the investigation would have actually dealt with the allegations , already out there the allegations would have been put into the public domain and therefore sometimes the public makes a judgement based on what has been put out there in the allegation,” Harmon said.

Self-confessed drug lord Barry Dataram had made serious allegations against officials of the Customs Anti-Narcotic Unit (CANU) prompting President Granger to order a probe, which was conducted by Brigadier Bruce Lovell.