By Mark Ramotar
GUNMEN fired at a small Guyana Sugar Corporation (GUYSUCO) aircraft deployed
in the search for two of the corporation’s workers missing since Saturday,
sources said yesterday.
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| SEARCH
INTENSIFIED: police vehicles join the search yesterday. (Quacy Sampson
photos) |
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Police and
relatives, neighbours and friends of the two men who mysteriously vanished,
intensified the search yesterday but hopes for their rescue dimmed as the third
day passed without success.
Up to
press time last night, there was still no word on the whereabouts of Sampersaud
Taranauth, called ‘Shammie’, 37, and Maikhram Sawh, called ‘Bharrat’,
46.
The two
men disappeared on Saturday while cleaning a canal in the Vigilance back dam.
The sugar
corporation threw the aircraft into the search Sunday as police, relatives and
others scoured the back dam for the men.
Sources
said they heard shots Sunday as the aircraft circled the area and others
yesterday confirmed that the light plane was the target.
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| DISTRAUGHT:
the wife and daughter of Maikhram Sawh, Jaso and Monica, sitting, being
consoled by two women at their Non Pariel home last evening. They were
near their phone, hoping for good news. |
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The Guyana
Chronicle understands that they are to meet Police Commissioner Winston Felix
this morning to discuss the next step forward.
Relatives
yesterday tried to see government officials about getting help from the Army to
search for the men.
They said
they met Home Affairs Minister Ronald Gajraj and Crime Chief Henry Greene.
It is
understood that Mr Gajraj assured them that the police were doing everything in
their power to find the men.
Bharrat’s
son, Lakeram, said he asked Gajraj if it was possible for the Army to help in
the search but was told that the police were handling the issue at this point in
time and were trying their utmost to find them.
Following
the meeting with the minister, heavily-armed police in patrol vehicles moved
several times into the back lands yesterday afternoon as the search intensified.
At around
14:30 h, five police vehicles with heavily-armed policemen in combat gear
entered the area from Enterprise while two other patrol vehicles moved in from
Lusignan.
The police
took the GUYSUCO foreman, Gobin Ram, who was Saturday in charge of the men who
are missing, with them to show them exactly where Shammie and Bharrat were
working when they disappeared.
Some
two-and-a-half hours later, and after walking and searching some three miles
along the canals going to the Brusche Dam area in Buxton, the police convoy
returned empty-handed.
The police
did not venture into the Buxton back dam, sources said.
Premdat
Seedath, called `Lenny’, the husband of Shammie’s sister-in-law, was the
other civilian who went into the back dam with the police.
“We’re
living in wonder right now…we’re just hoping and praying and hoping and
praying,” Lenny told the Guyana Chronicle shortly after he returned from the
fruitless search.
He said
that when his mother died at a city hospital a few years ago, it did not hurt
him as much because he knew what had happened and had come to accept the fact
that she had passed away.
But in
this instance, Lenny said the situation is totally different, since nobody knows
what happened or where the men are.
Shammie’s
wife, Kamini, continued to hope and pray that her husband was alive somewhere
and would return home soon.
She said
her six-year-old daughter, Sarah, who understands a little of what is going on,
went to the family ‘altar’ Sunday morning and offered flowers and prayers
for her father’s safe return home.
At the
Bharrats home, scores of relatives and friends gathered as they tried to console
the missing man’s wife, son and daughter.
A police
source told this newspaper that someone called the Vigilance Police Station
yesterday morning and told the Sergeant there that the two men were being held
against their will in an ‘old church building’ in Buxton.
It is
understood that the police searched the building without success.
President of the Guyana Agricultural and General Workers Union (GAWU), Mr Komal
Chand visited the families of the sugar workers and assured them that the union
will do everything within its power to help.
The two
men and two others were assigned to clean trenches in fields aback of Vigilance
Saturday when they disappeared.
The four
had left their bicycles in one location before heading into the fields to clean
the sideline trenches.
They
divided the task with two cleaning from one end and the other two from the other
end and were to have met in the middle.
But when the other two men finished their section, they did not see the others and the police were alerted after they were not found.