Dear Editor,
In the aftermath of the Cessna Caravan accident on January 18, 2014 off Olive Creek, Mazaruni and other recent aircraft accidents/incidents, there has been a call for investigations of these occurrences by a body independent of the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority (GCAA).
This call is not without precedence since in 1982-83 during the tenure of the late Steve Narine, then Minister of Works, I recommended that a team of Caribbean Civil Aviation (senior) staff be put together to investigate aircraft accidents in the Commonwealth Caribbean states. I made this recommendation at the same time as I made another one to the Minister, viz, that Guyana initiate talks with its Caricom sisters about an SAS type airline as a model for a Caricom regional air-carrier along the guidelines set out by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO). This was before the Multinational Air Carrier for the Caribbean study was done by Aer Lingus.
At a meeting with Vice-President Steve Narine in his capacity as the Minister responsible for transport a more senior officer said relative to the first above-mentioned recommendation, that he didn’t want another agency looking over his shoulder, and the matter ended there. Almost three decades later the idea has again surfaced.
However, my view is that we need a holistic Guyana Transport Safety Bureau (GTSB) which in the wake of numerous riverain and other road accidents would investigate and seek compliance with the standards and practices set out by ICAO, aircraft manufacturers and other authorities in the fields of transport. In the area of marine transport laws relative to an excess of alcohol intake by the captains of river craft, for example, would be reviewed or enforced, especially when landing in mining areas or at stellings away from the beaten track.
In the area of road transport the matter of emergency cones for use by broken-down vehicles or large trucks on narrow lanes could be examined, as well as noise nuisance and the need for larger mass transit public road movers to reduce the gridlock because of the paucity of hard surface roads. We should be mindful of the increasing number of vehicles being imported into Guyana. These are in addition to those from Suriname and from Brazil in the south via Lethem.
Editor, transportation safety is not only about air transport. If there is a cost attached to doing it professionally right ‒ so be it. I am quite sure the USA and Canadian governments would be willing to assist in the quest for attaining such professionalism should a request be submitted to the Technical Assistance Bureau of ICAO.
Yours faithfully,
Aubrey Alexander
