INTERNATIONAL Pharmaceutical Agency (IPA) has put a global positioning system (GPS) on the local market, for motor vehicles surveillance and anti-hijacking purposes.

The 24-hour daily satellite linked service is being offered at the company’s Lot 226 ‘B’ Camp Street, Georgetown business premises.

IPA said it can keep track of vehicles and was being used in many developed countries of the world, prior to its introduction in Guyana where it has been successfully tested.

An IPA representative said it can be of immense practical value to owners of fleets of vehicles, such as taxi services, business persons who do wholesale distribution of goods or transport cargo, minibuses and even individuals who have need for a high level of security.

“You can know all the routes along which your vehicles were driven, the time spent at each location, the number of journeys made and the speed history at any given time,” he assured.

The salesman said, in the event that a vehicle is being driven on unauthorised routes, the GPS will help the owner detect it early and take action.

Other benefits include:
* the user being able to monitor the time spent at any place, so that misuse could be avoided and more work done for greater profit from the operations;

* those who rent vehicles will be able to ascertain how many trips were made along the designated route;

* a vehicle owner can be provided with information on its location within ten seconds of a request being made;

* an owner can obtain, on request to the IPA Control Room, information on the speed history of the vehicle on any given day, every 30 seconds if necessary and

* an owner can have access to the shutdown/anti-hijack feature, which will, on report of a theft, allow IPA operatives to immobilise the vehicle wherever it is and retrieve it in the shortest possible time.

The last entails use of a concealed panic button which, when pressed by the driver, sends a signal to the IPA Control Room, from where an electronic command is sent to the GPS in the vehicle to shut down the engine.

After the shutdown is activated, an armed rescue unit is dispatched for the vehicle recovery, almost simultaneously with an alert to the nearest Police station, the IPA representative explained.

He said, when the vehicle rolls to a stop and remains immobile, it can no longer be operated by a thief or hijacker and stays on the spot until the IPA emergency team arrives and takes control of it.

Customers can get the GPS by taking their vehicles to IPA, leaving them for about two hours and retrieve them with the system fully activated.

The GPS Vehicle Tracker can be obtained for an activation fee of $40,000 and payment for IPA Armed Security Response, data analysis and printouts, for about $5,000 a month or little more, the IPA representative said.

IPA can be contacted on telephone number 225-0746-8 or through e-mail: at ipa_graphics@yahoo.com.