POLICE yesterday continued their search for the two Guyana Sugar Corporation (GUYSUCO) employees, who mysteriously disappeared on Saturday last while working in an area aback Vigilance, which neighbours the violence-prone and troubled East Coast Demerara village of Buxton.
Up to late
yesterday afternoon, there was still no clue as to the whereabouts of Sam
Persaud Tarran Nauth, called ‘Shammie’, 37, and Maikhram Sawh, called ‘Bharrat’,
46.
As the search intensified yesterday, aided by a GUYSUCO aircraft, relatives, friends and neighbours of the two men flocked to their homes to comfort their immediate families and to offer words of encouragement and hope that the men are still alive and would return home soon.
Most of the visitors, however, could not hide their ‘gut’ suspicion that Shammie and Bharrat might have been kidnapped. Up to last evening, however, there was no ransom demand or communication of any
kind made to the families of the missing workers.Surrounded by scores of relatives, friends and neighbours, Shammie’s 34-year-old wife, Kamini, was lying in a hammock under the front part of their home in Fernandes Street, Enterprise, in a grief-stricken state when this newspaper visited
Gunmen fire at Guysuco aircraft
SEARCH INTENSIFIED: police vehicles join the search yesterday.
(Quacy Sampson photos)
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.
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.
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.
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.