For the next three years, Guyana’s forensic science capabilities will be boosted since the government has contracted the services of four foreign experts.
And these experts, from India, will be tasked with training local personnel, including Police Officers, the Attorney General and Minister of Legal Affairs, Anil Nandlall SC said on Monday.
“We have imported four highly qualified forensic experts who are going to be attached to the (Guyana Forensic Science Laboratory) for the next three years.
“I have also asked the University of Guyana to sit with those experts and work out a training programme in forensic science,” the Attorney General said at the opening session of a training workshop at Duke Lodge, Kingston.
He also noted that the Commissioner of Police (ag.) Clifton Hicken has been asked to include sessions in the standard Police training programme that these experts can assist with.
These experts, the Attorney General said, are highly skilled in various fields including forensic photography, documentation examination, ballistics and fingerprinting.
As such, he hopes law enforcement and judicial officers will capitalise on their expertise while they are in Guyana.
Contracting these experts are part of the government’s plans to bolster the Guyana Police Force’s crime-solving capabilities. Aside from local capacity building, Nandlall noted that the government is focused on investing in the necessary equipment to guarantee that much-needed forensic services can be carried out here.
There is the possibility that these experts will compromise the” labs” science, work with police, especially the DPP and most cases may not be prosecuted. India is a good example in which the police there turn their eyes the other way, once politicians, money, the rich can say otherwise.