–of villagers’ involvement with illegal aircraft’s activities in the area

THE Toshao of Parabara, a Deep South Rupununi village, “has clear knowledge” of the involvement of residents there in the operations of an illegal aircraft, at an unauthorised landing strip in the area.

This is according to the findings of the Commission of Inquiry (COI) into the presence of an illegal, foreign aircraft in nearby Yupukari on September 13, 2016.
The report also points to residents of the entire Region Nine (Upper Takutu-Upper Essequibo), where both Parabara and Yupukari are located, being knowledgeable of the illegal air and ground operations, between September 2015 and October 2016. It said too, that in some cases, persons were even named by the police as being intimately involved in the operations.

On Thursday, Minister of State, Joseph Harmon told the media during a briefing, that the COI report spoke to persons being complicit in the area.
He said the government has since examined how the police and military are structured in the area, and that changes were made, including at the senior management level, of the police stationed in the Rupununi.
“What we recognised,” Minister Harmon said, “is that there was a failure to really regularly communicate with the citizens of these communities; these far flung communities.”
He said that since the September 2016 sighting, the regional and district intelligence systems of communication have been activated.

Minister Harmon said the committees at reference meet monthly or fortnightly, and will have a collaboration of information which would be provided to a regional intelligence committee.
“So we have reinstituted that system,” he said, adding that there is regular communication between the committees and the villages.

According to the supporting documents of the report compiled by former Guyana Defence Force (GDF) Chief of Staff, Brigadier Edward Collins,it was stated that Senior Superintendent, Linden Denny had made several reports of the presence of aircraft at the villages of Achiwib, Katoka, Mandakara, Munwar Savannah, Parabara and at Tampem.
The report states that at Parabara, the police received information that an aircraft had touched down one moonlight night last January, and that several fire spots were lit along the runway strip to provide landing to the aircraft.
A police report pointed out that several persons were involved in the maintenance and monitoring of the airstrip, located some seven miles from the village. The persons named are a man and his sons from the village of Karawadaru, located in the Deep South Rupununi.

The police reported, too, that the village captain has clear knowledge of his “people’s involvement in the maintenance of the airstrip,” and that a farmer in the area has two secret camps in the bushes next to his farm camp, where he stores fuel and other equipment which he manages for the strip’s maintenance.
It was noted, too, that a member of the Karawadaru Village Council, who is also a member of a community policing group (CPG), is related to one of the persons who maintains the Parabara strip, and that he, too, has clear knowledge of all that is taking place.
Back in September, the South Rupununi Development Council (SRDC), under which 21 Wapishana villages in Region Nine fall, noted that the presence of several illegal airstrips at Parabara is one of several challenges facing the Wapichan Indigenous group.

The Guyana Chronicle reported two months ago that a law-enforcement team was dispatched to the area to carry out an investigation following reports that several aircraft were seen landing at an illegal airstrip near the Parabara savannah.
According to reports from the area, on several occasions in recent months, aircraft were seen circling and later landing in the Parabara savannah, south of Lumid Pau.

The COI report, released last week, provides names of several persons from remote villages and from the town of Lethem, who the police noted were involved in the illegal aircraft operations in the region.