In the midst of a crisis that has seen fishermen being attacked on an almost daily basis by pirates, Chief of Staff of the Guyana Defence Force Commodore Gary Best on Friday announced that the military was in the process of acquiring additional boats and high frequency radios to bolster its anti-piracy fight.
Best, who spent most of his military life in the maritime wing of the GDF, said the Coast Guard had to find a way of maintaining a longer presence on the seas and one way of doing so was to boost maritime capabilities.
He told a press conference at Camp Ayanganna that the army was looking at acquiring small insured boats and radios, which would allow the Coast Guard to be in touch with fishermen and respond to their travails in a timely manner.
Sea bandits have wreaked havoc across the country in recent months, hijacking boats and killing some of the hapless fishermen. In a statement last month, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said it had confirmed that some of the sea pirates attacking Guyanese fishermen were using Suriname as a safe haven after committing their attacks.
The Agriculture Ministry had issued a call for Suriname to support Guyana in its fight against piracy. “We need to see greater demonstration by Suriname to support our effort on piracy,” Agriculture Minis-ter Robert Persaud had said.
The Foreign Ministry had said that government was determined to eradicate the operations of pirates and would redouble its efforts in this regard. It also reiterated its concern about the development of a pattern in which fishing vessels were being hijacked and their crews killed or maimed. “These brutal crimes are also threatening the growth of an important industry and seriously affecting the livelihood of our fishermen and their families,” the statement said. The statement went on to say that it would be making use of every opportunity to put an end to the use of the territory of neighbouring states by pirates as safe havens through surveillance cooperation and other initiatives. Some of the fishermen who have suffered at the hands of pirates are not surprised about the government claim that their attackers escaped to Suriname. Victims had recounted how masked armed men stole their engines and their catches and then left them stranded in the deep sea, and some had expressed the view that the pirates were Surinamese who had joined up with Guyanese to commit their crimes.
At a Cabinet outreach to Region Six last month, President Bharrat Jagdeo had announced that Guyana would make a formal approach to Suriname to discuss piracy issues.
Best told the media that efforts are being made by the army to increase its presence at sea, noting that despite the many constraints, the GDF Coast Guard has been conducting patrols in various fishing zones across the country.
Back in September stakeholders in the fishing industry and the GDF unveiled a strategy to tackle rampant sea piracy. At the time Col Bruce Lovell said that the GDF would collaborate with the Agriculture Ministry, the Guyana Police Force and the various fishing complexes to craft what he referred to as a multi-agency strategy to tackle the upsurge in acts of piracy that have been occurring in the Berbice/Corentyne area. Lovell said a central plank of the strategy would see the Coast Guard better poised to act as a deterrent in the first instance, as well as provide a rapid response capability to any act of piracy. He said the strategy was expected to see greater collaboration and information sharing among the many stakeholders.
On the issue of defending the country’s borders, Best told the news conference that the army continued to be beset by resource constraints, nevertheless he said it had been conducting aerial patrols, although these have not been dedicated. He made a special appeal to aircraft owners to join the fight with the GDF to monitor the borders and also provide surveillance services.
Best acknowledged that had the air corps capacity been at its optimum it would have been able to respond much faster to the discovery of an illegal airstrip at Orealla last week. At present, the GDF is operating two aircraft; its Bell 412 helicopter has been down since last year December.
