By Kurt Campbell
[www.inewsguyana.com] – The commissioning of Guyana’s first Forensic Laboratory is set for July 14, according to Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee.
Rohee told reporters this morning (Wednesday July 9), that the lab is “ready to go.”
He assured that the lab will never be a ‘white elephant’; adding that the staff of over 20 persons has already been recruited.
He recalled that ads were placed in local newspapers and subsequently applicants were interviewed by a panel and later referred to the Public Service Commission.
Minister Rohee explained that while the lab is not ready to be fully occupied, some of the staff will be operating from the implementation unit of the Citizen Security Programme (CSP) at Ogle, East Coast Demerara.
This comes some three years after the contract was initially signed for the construction of the lab, which experienced several delays in its completion. The commissioning of the multimillion-dollar laboratory was scheduled to be completed 12 months after the contract was signed in April 2011.
The equipment and furnishing for the building, which is located in the University of Guyana’s compound at Turkeyen, Greater Georgetown, has already been procured and installed. In December 2012, a US$1.6 million contract was signed between the Home Affairs Ministry and Western Scientific Company for the supply of scientific equipment for the state-of-the-art Forensic Laboratory.
The lab is a project under the Citizen Security Programme (CSP), initiated by the Government and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). This programme has three aspects: institutional modernisation of the Home Affairs Ministry, the Community Action Component (CAC), and modernisation of the Guyana Police Force (GPF), which includes strengthening its forensic capability.
