-farmers, agriculture students to benefit

THE building which once housed students pursuing the Regional Educational Programme for Animal Health Assistants (REPAHA) will soon be renovated and turned into a training hub where virtual learning will be offered to farmers and agriculture students countrywide.
The facility will also be made available to Guyana Livestock Development Authority (GLDA) staff and those residing in sister Caribbean countries who are pursuing studies in agriculture.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the GLDA, Grayson Halley, made these disclosures to Guyana Chronicle during an interview on Sunday.
He said talks are already underway to see the rehabilitation of the building which is located at GLDA’s Mon Repos, East Coast Demerara headquarters. He recently inspected the structure.
Halley told this publication that the institution, at one point, along with the Guyana School of Agriculture (GSA), were the leading agriculture institutions in the Caribbean; however, after the REPAHA was merged with the GSA, the building was left to deteriorate. “They use to have children coming from all over the Caribbean to attend that school. Back then they didn’t have UWI [University of the West Indies] and agriculture programmes. GSA and REPAHA used to be the leading agriculture institutions in the Caribbean,” he said.

The building, he informed, once housed the library, anatomy laboratory and chemistry laboratory. “That building there was the library and the anatomy lab and another portion of it was the chemistry lab. Some of the things went over to GSA and the school picked up that animal health programme and the building was given to the NDDP [National Dairy Department Programme],” he informed. The GLDA later took over the compound and renovations were only done on the main buildings leaving that REPAHA building neglected.
Nevertheless, Halley noted that the building will now be equipped with modern technology to keep up with the times as well as to facilitate virtual learning.
“Students can go and do training there and we will put in some modern technology, like smart board, online teaching [equipment] like computers and those kinds of things,” he said adding: “We are going to try and make it a virtual environment because with COVID we are doing a lot of things online and this way, if we do that our teaching activity can reach hinterland areas. Whatever programme we are doing on the coast we can broadcast it to other regions,” he explained. The current vision of the GLDA, he added, is to transform the space into a modern training centre equipped within smart board and other modern futuristic equipment/gadgets that will help to better train and deliver information to staff, farmers and agriculture students. These plans, he said, are part of the 2021 budget. However, at the time of the interview he could not disclose the estimated amount the rehabilitation works will cost.