Government considering buying aircraft for GDF from India

Denying that the Government has purchased an aircraft from India for the Guyana Defence Force (GDF), President Irfaan Ali on Tuesday clarified that the government is still in talks with Hindustan Aviation Limited in India concerning a possible replacement for one of the Defence Force’s skyvans.

At his press conference on Tuesday, Mr. Ali explained that during his recent seven-day visit to India, he met with the aviation company to discuss support for the re-engineering and retooling of the Guyana Defence Force’s air corps, including the replacement of an aircraft, that will soon be out of commission.

“You know the skyvan, one is already out, and one we have limited hours on, so the replacement aircraft that we are looking at, one of it is this Donair, and they are now working on it at the technical level. I know some meetings are going on with the Civil Aviation Authority of Guyana and the Civil Aviation Authority of India. Then there is a technical team that will go to make an assessment and then we will get recommendations out of that. But what they have proposed is the supply not only of the [air]craft but the training, the technology, the maintenance stream, everything,” President Ali said.

Noting that India is significantly advanced in the area of defence technology, the Commander-in-Chief said his Administration has also asked the Indian Government for assistance with human resource development and capacity building in the area of technology.

“So, we had discussions around not only the training of our men and women in uniform but also to see how we can collaborate in terms of defence technology, in terms of the modernization of the Guyana Defence Force and the Police Force, supporting us in terms of our equipment transformation, so that we can have a defence capability and a policing capability that functions on good technological platform but is also supported with good human resource training and access to equipment,” he said.

This year, the Government intends to inject $58.6B into the security sector to enhance the safety and security of citizens as it employs the use of a range of technologies.