Guyana about to begin remapping for better land use, management

Last Updated on Monday, 9 December 2019, 20:52 by Writer

GLSC’s Commissioner and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Trevor Benn

The Guyana government will shortly begin remapping the country for the first time in 50 years to give prospective and current land users a better idea of location, resources and features, officials said.

Commissioner of the Guyana Lands and Survey Commission (GLSC), Trevor Benn says an US$18 million project was approved by the National Procurement and Tender Administration.

Mr. Benn says theft of the engineers’ computer delayed the start of the first phase scheduled for regions 1 (Barima Waini) and 4 (Demerara-Mahaica).

“That work is about to start. A consultant and his team are on the ground. There are two aircraft, at the moment, lying at the Ogle Airport. Unfortunately, when they arrived here three Fridays ago, we had a very ugly incident where their laptop was removed from the airplane without their consent at one of our airports and that delayed the work and now that they have been able to replace the laptop, the rain is upon us,” he said.

The GLSC commissioner says an independent British firm run by retired geospatial engineer Andrew Coot-Wilby independent firm will remap Guyana.

Manager of GLSC’s Land Information and Mapping Department, Naseem Nasir outlines the benefits of the re-mapping exercise. “Mapping brings a picture of what resources are available on the land to you, so now, as an agency, if you are in charge of land use planning, you can now use these maps, look at where the roads are, where the rivers are, the areas covered by forests or its opened out and make the sort of decisions that you need to make,” he said.

The first phase of the remapping exercise is expected to be completed within one year.