–during his three-year tenure

US Ambassador, Brent Hardt, in an interview with the Guyana Chronicle, has noted that during his three-year tenure, much has been accomplished.

He said: “It’s been a wonderful three years, and our embassy has been able to accomplish a great deal, and I’m sure we’ll continue to do so.

“And I’d like to highlight the fact that we’ve really been able to broaden our engagement with people of Guyana across the border.”
Ambassador Hardt said that while relations between countries are usually relations between governments, underlying those relations are relations between people, an area that has been a point of success in the embassy’s work.

Ambassador Hardt said, “When you think of how, in texture, the relationship is between Guyana and the US; the scope of interpersonal contacts that we have; the number of Guyanese that we have who have families in the US, who do business in the US, travel back and forth; remittances that are sent, it is a broad scope of relations!

“We’ve been able to engage so many tremendous people in Guyana who are doing great things to try to make their communities better.
“We’ve seen university students who are eager to debate certain issues; women entrepreneurs who are looking to start their businesses; private sector groups who are looking to create a better investment climate; people active in social areas, for example, young people trying to clean up their communities and working with us…”

The outgoing ambassador stressed that this has been the “best part” of the embassy’s work, and a “key focus” of the two countries’ engagements.
SECTOR SUPPORT

Hardt noted that the Embassy has worked with the Government of Guyana in several areas, including security and law enforcement, health, eco-tourism, and the environment.

“We’ve had an excellent security and law enforcement relationship that we’ve been able to deepen because of the support from the Caribbean Basin Security Initiative, President Obama’s initiative launched in 2010 that has so far provided US$263M in support to the Caribbean, and Guyana being a major recipient of that,” he said.

The ambassador added that in the last year, the US has provided metal shark boats to the Guyanese Coast Guard, facilitated training from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and worked on improving security at Guyana’s main entry points.

“We’ve seen strengthening of port security for the containers; security initiative; digitalization of finger prints, which has already led to more cases being solved and better cross border cooperation; destruction of weapons; and markings of firearms to dealers….It is a whole panoply of law enforcement security cooperation that’s only going to get closer going forward,” he said.

Hardt stated, too, that the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has seen much work done, particularly in ensuring delivery of medications in a timely manner.

The ambassador said, “We’ve continued, over the past few years, to engage in public health through our PEPFAR programme to combat HIV/AIDS, and we’ve seen the new warehouse for pharmaceuticals that’s up and running; which is a major step forward in the management and oversight of making sure that medicines get out to people when they’re needed and they’re still good.

“We’ve seen development of the reference laboratory, which is the best in the Caribbean; and then the reinforcement of the public health infrastructure in a way that has allowed us to reduce the incidents of AIDS here, to prevent mother-to-child transmission, save hundreds of thousands of lives, and provide care and treatment to those who need it.”

He also disclosed that efforts are being made to move towards a more technical support model, “where the investment of $170M we’ve made over the last decade will increasingly be taken over by the Government of Guyana and the Ministry of Health to carry that forward.

“We’ve helped to tackle the crisis in AIDS that existed,” Ambassador Hardt said.

Hardt underscored the moves being made in the non-traditional agriculture and aquaculture, and stated that USAID offers support to continuously advance in this regard, as well as in the area of eco-tourism and in addressing social issues.

“So these are all areas and issues where I think we’ve been engaged in and been able to help encourage discussion of important issues within the country,” he said.

The Ambassador pointed also to the support given to Guyana on the economic front. “On the economic front as well, we’re doing all we can to promote prosperity and close trade investment links between our countries…

“We tried to promote entrepreneurship among women and other businesses, we had entrepreneurship speed challenge where we had young people with good ideas, and we were able to bring them together with mentors and investors,” he said.

Ambassador Hardt is expected to leave Guyana in early July.

(By Ravin Singh)