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`We’re living in wonder right now…we’re just hoping and praying and hoping and praying’ – Lenny, a relative
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.
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By Mark Ramotar
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| MISSING:
Maikhram Sawh, called ‘Bharrat’ and his wife, Jaso, in happier
times. |
Missing
: MISSING: Sam Persaud Taran Nauth, called Shammie |
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.
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| Kamini
Taran Nauth, 34, wife of ‘Shammie’, and their three daughters, Divya,
seven months, Sarah, 6, and Lisa, 4. |
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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