BROOKLYN, NY – A promise made to the Guyana Defense Force (GDF) to enhance its current transport fleet and security capabilities became a reality on Sunday when President Dr. Mohamed Irfaan Ali commissioned a BELL 412 EPI helicopter
In his address at the ceremony, Ali said the Government would continue to invest in boosting its human resources capacities.
“We’ve been investing continuously in training, upgrading, and development of our human assets. With this acquisition comes a new era of training, an upgraded era of development; it brings new potential, new capacity, and things we have to celebrate.
We have spent a lot of resources in upgrading our human resources to take care of these assets and to ensure that we move towards a modern pool of capital acquisition that will improve our efficiency and enhance our national security,” the President said.
To this end, Ali said that on Monday, to compliment the helicopter’s arrival, a team would leave to inspect the metal shark’s performance and analyze the Force’s various marine assets. This is aimed at moving towards the acquisition of new marine assets to support the Coast Guard’s work, he said.
This is the beginning of a new trend. Long before we get to the end of this year, we’ll see new assets acquired for our Coast Guard. This is the beginning. As I said, we have to analyze our security sector’s new requirements based on our development path. Indeed, we have a lot more economic assets to protect.
We will have a larger economy [and] we have the more sophisticated type of criminal activities to deal with. All of this requires a modern, forward-looking, security architecture, and that is what we are building.”
The president also noted that this was only the beginning of the advancements for the GDF and urged Guyanese, whom he said are the greatest partners in the nation’s security and development, to continue to support the work of the GDF to keep the borders safe.
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