AS Guyana is now declared an oil-producing state, the Civil Defence Commission (CDC), on Wednesday, began its first exercise with several agencies to strengthen Guyana’s oil spill response capabilities.

Director General of the CDC, Lieutenant Colonel Kester Craig, explained that the activity is a table top and more of a command post exercise that engages all the agencies that have roles and responsibilities that are included in the National Oil Spill Contingency Plan.
“This activity is part of what is called Exercise Tradewinds. Exercise Tradewinds is a regional security exercise but has a component for disaster response or what you call humanitarian resistance and disaster relief. So as part of Exercise Tradewinds 2020, which will be held in June, we will test two components of our national disaster mechanism; the oil spill response component and the flooding response component. Leading up to that, we’re doing a series of training exercises to ensure that the players know their responsibilities, and understand what they want to do. The best way to do that is through these exercises, so we started off with this, to orient the players to their roles and responsibilities, and it is also for teaching purposes to ensure they understand exactly what to do,” Craig expounded.

The participants included representatives from the Maritime Administrative Department, Coast Guard, Environmental Protection Agency, Guyana Defence Force, Guyana Geology and Mines Commission, Guyana Police Force, Guyana Fire Service, Ministry of Health, CDC, and more. Also present were partners from the US who came to give technical support – US Coast Guards, Canadian Defence Force, NASSAU and more.

Craig said that with the exercise, they sent out injects to the participants and based on the different injects, the players have to take action based on their role and responsibility. Based on the responses and actions taken, the CDC team assisted by their US partners, will gather information on how they can further strengthen the plan and development.

“The plan and development is a continuous, elaborative process, where as you go along and test, you make adjustments to suit the local context,” Craig said. He told the Guyana Chronicle that with their response training sessions, they place emphasis on minimising impact. Additionally, they will also be conducting on-the-ground assessments to ensure that Guyana is safe during the oil production. CDC is the competent national authority to deal with disaster management and they began in-house training three years ago, to equip them with oil and gas.