JUNIOR Public Infrastructure Minister Anette Ferguson,has said Government is considering calls by the National Air Transport Association (NATA) executives to improve capacity for search-and-rescue services in the event of accidents in the aviation sector.
Speaking with the Guyana Chronicle at NATA’s first Annual General Meeting (AGM) Wednesday, Minister Ferguson said calls made by the association’s Vice-President, Captain Gerry Gouveia and President Annette Arjoon-Martins, will be taken into consideration, especially with an expected increase in flights as Guyana prepares for massive oil-and-gas exploration.
“Now that the call has been made with suggestions coming from the floor this afternoon, it is something that Government can take up, review and once it is feasible and workable, we have no difficulty having those measures implemented,” Minister Ferguson told the Guyana Chronicle.
Aircraft and crew have gone missing without a trace in the past, and the minister emphasised that ‘search and rescue’ is a major priority for aviators here.
The Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) has been working assiduously to comprehensively and adequately address this matter.
With an oil-and-gas industry on the horizon, aviation is expected to have a massive boost. Companies have already started expressing interest in facilitating increase in air transport services within Guyana’s hinterland.
“Companies have started to engage [Government] where large helicopter companies want to come in and do business since oil and gas is something coming on stream. So what we have to do is get ourselves ready… ensure that those measures are put in place to avoid any relapses of what we had before,” the minister said.
Gouveia reiterated the long unanswered call for national search-and-rescue capacity and disclosed that he had been echoing such calls for the past 25 years.

SERIOUS CONCERN
“Search and rescue remains a very serious concern of the local aviation industry. It’s unfortunate… since we were young men in the army that we always respond almost continuously to these things, instead of having a system set up like the Fire Service. You may not use it, you wish you don’t have to use it, but it must be there,” Gouveia advised.
He said for years professionals within the aviation sector had presented ideas to stakeholders to establish and equip a separate body of professionals to conduct the life-saving missions.
“Search and rescue remains a very serious concern of the private sector and minister after minister after minister, in the last 25 years, we have been pleading, ‘please take search and rescue serious’…. The sector has been advocating for a long time that maybe what we could do is set up the search-and-rescue system in the organisation of the Civil Defence Commission (CDC), because they already have equipment and machines and all they have to have is a department in there to deal with the maritime search and rescue and aviation search and rescue. But they have the emergency response systems already.”
Recalling his own experience years ago, Gouveia indicated that there is much fear when someone is involved in an aviation mishap in the jungle.

“I remember the night when I lay on the jungle floor after my own accident and worried about whether I would be found. Luckily at the time I had my own helicopter and the next day Major Sandiford came to rescue me. But we did not have, even back then 23-years ago, a search-and-rescue system that could instill the confidence.”

CONFIDENCE
In tourism, mining, forestry or whatever the sector, he said people must be confident when they fly in the hinterland that a search-and-rescue system is there.
NATA President Arjoon-Martins said building search-and-rescue capacity is vital, not only for aviators and their families, but tourism and other sectors as well.
“We need to have very strong search-and-rescue capacity, because that’s a big part of our tourism industry right now…. I am begging you to let us this year break that 25-year log-jam that Gerry spoke about, where over the past 25 years we reiterated and it got nowhere,” Arjune-Martins pleaded.
Meanwhile, Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA) Director-General, Colonel Egbert Fields, said the organisation is currently making preparations for activating an active search-and-rescue unit, and has already selected individuals who are currently being trained in search and rescue.
He said Guyana will have an active professional body within the next six months to address such.
“For this year, I have identified a couple of individuals who have embarked on training… strictly overseas training, to prepare them for the search and rescue… also, to instruct and administer the necessary instructions in search and rescue… to prepare them to deal with search and rescue and the elements in the near future,” Colonel Fields said.
He added: “Within the next six months, we should be able to have search and rescue. I wouldn’t say we would have all the elements, like helicopters and these things in place, but in terms of the personnel and individuals knowing what to do during the time of need, we should have those in place.”