–new facility to be a modern 12-storey, concrete, steel-and-glass building
TWO years after the Brickdam Police station was gutted by fire, officials on Monday turned the sod for a US$28 million modern 12-storied, concrete, steel and glass building to be constructed.
President, Dr. Irfaan Ali, joined the top brass of the Guyana Police Force (GPF) for the ceremony, where the previous century-old police station once stood, and while addressing ranks, the Head of State highlighted that the construction of the new building will see the further modernisation of the country’s security services.
The new building, which is being constructed by R. Bassoo & Sons Construction Company in partnership with Qingjian Group Guyana Limited, will feature modern fire prevention mechanisms and will also be equipped to handle an earthquake of magnitude 5.0.
Construction is expected to be completed in 30 months.
“The government has the responsibility of building institutions, building facilities, and building an economy that gives every single citizen an opportunity to prosper and an opportunity to enjoy a good standard of living under the development of a culture of peace and prosperity, and the security architecture of the country must be able to do this,” said Dr. Ali, who is also the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.
Addressing the modernisation of the GPF, President Ali said digitisation and automation will be key components as the government seeks to advance its security sector.
“We want to remove the human bias in our security architecture. So, everything will be done through traceability, everything will be done full traceability. The entire system will be on a digital platform that is fully automated, where people will be held accountable by a system,” the Head of State said.
Once completed, the new building will house the operations of the divisional headquarters four; it will also feature essential departments such as, traffic, finance, and the criminal investigation departments.
“What we want to do is to move as much of the services from Eve Leary into this new facility that we are building here, because we want to free up Eve Leary to be primarily the police academy, to support the work that we are going to do in building out a world class, state-of the-art police academy to serve all of this region,” President Ali said.
Back in October 2021, a fire, which was later determined to have been set by a prisoner being held at the police station destroyed the then wooden building.
The construction of the new police station will be the single largest infrastructural project to be undertaken by the Ministry of Home Affairs and according to the subject Minister, Robeson Benn improved management will be needed.
Minister Benn lamented the circumstances that led to the 2021 fire and urged stakeholders to learn from the past.
“We have to look at this particular issue, and we have to learn from this issue. There were failures and the failures led us to this terrible loss and tragedy,” Benn said.
Police Commissioner (ag), Clifton Hicken said the investments made to improve the infrastructure of the GPF creates an impact as it relates to conduciveness and efficiency.
“This coincides with the transformation we are trying to achieve moving from a Guyana Police Force to a Guyana police service. We cannot do this transition without the right infrastructure in place. And I’m happy to be the Police Commissioner during this period when we are going to create history,” Hicken said.
While the project is scheduled to be completed in two and half years, the contractors have signaled that works could be completed ahead of the timeframe.
