The search for Aliya Bulkan continues
Tour operators at the Kaieteur National Park are being placed on heightened alert but, Captain Gerry Gouveia maintained that Saturday’s incident will not negatively affect the waterfall as a tourist attraction.

“It is not an issue of safety. If someone slipped and fell it may have had an impact but when there is an intent that is different,” he said.

The Roraima Airways owner pointed out the fact that the popular Niagara Falls, in Canada, has been a tourist attraction where there have been such incidences yet there attraction of the site has not diminished.

Meanwhile, the search for the body of 23-year-old Aliya Bulkan, has seen the end of another day without any results.

Also, the officers from the army that were expected to assist in the search were not present on site.

However, the young woman’s father, Mr. Rustum Bulkan, supported by local residents is continuing efforts at the base of the waterfalls.

Bulkan, the joint Managing Director of Precision Woodworking, lost the second of three daughters when she reportedly leapt off the edge of the Kaieteur Falls.

Eyewitnesses claim that at the end of the tour, the falls being the last stop on the tour of the Kaieteur National Park, Aliya turned back, in the direction of the falls, making the deadly leap over the 741 ft. high waterfall.

The Kaieteur Falls, the largest single drop waterfall in the world, is a magnificent, high volume fall on the Potaro River and flows over a series of steep cascades, which total 822 ft.

The young and a friend, Ms. Lisa Ahmad, were among eight others on the trip to Kaieteur Falls, including the pilot.

Their flight with Roraima Airways left Georgetown at 08:15h and reached the destination point a 09:15h.

Family members, according to the eldest Bulkan daughter, Ms. Camilla Bulkan, are coping with the tragedy.

As a St. Margaret’s Primary School student, she was the top student in 1998 at the Secondary School Entrance Examinations (SSEE) or ‘Common Entrance’ examinations.

Aliya went on to become one of the top students from Queen’s College at the Caribbean Secondary Education Certificate (CSEC) examinations, with eight grade ones and two grade twos.

In an interview with the Guyana Chronicle when she topped at the ‘Common Entrance’ tests in 1998, Aliya had noted that she wanted to become an astronomer.

However, she shifted her interest and after completing studies in Guyana, she majored in English at Stony Brook University in Long Island, New York City in the United States.

In the year she finished Queen’s College, she was awarded the prize for winning the under-18 category of Association of Guyanese Writers and Artists (AGWA).

Last December, after four years, she graduated with honours, Magna Cum Laude, the second highest level of academic recognition at the prominent Long Island University.

According to her relatives, the girl’s dream was to become an editor with a renowned publishing house.