Georgetown: After much delay, the commissioning of Guyana’s first Forensic Laboratory is set for next week, according to Home Affairs Minister Clement Rohee.
This comes some three years after the contract was initially signed for the construction of the lab, which experienced several delays in its completion. In early June, the Minister had informed this newspaper that there were some “small technical work to be done” on the building before it was completed.
The commissioning of the multimillion-dollar laboratory was scheduled to be completed 12 months after the contract was signed in April 2011; however, it was pushed back and delayed on several occasions. A new deadline was set in April 2013, but that additional one-year extension was not sufficient.
The new date for completion could not be achieved since the contractor, Courtney Benn Contracting Services, had experienced some unforeseeable setbacks. Following this, there were several additional deadlines missed, including four for this year alone. One was in February and another in April. The latter date was announced by the Home Affairs Minister during his presentation of the 2014 Budget Debate. The Minister had stated that due to several technical delays, the lab was not completed by late last year as was expected.
Another deadline was given, in May, but again it was not achieved; as such, what was supposed to be the very last deadline for the completion of the lab, June 17 was given. With delays being missed a norm for projects in Guyana, fingers were crossed for the lab to be finally commissioned on the new date given by the Minister.
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.
Meanwhile, a director has also been identified and several positions have been filled. Rohee had stated that a few months back that at least 31 applications were received for the 21 positions available and an interview panel was set up to select the best candidates. “The interview panel was set up because the competition is high, because we have received 31 applications and only have 21 positions available…,” the Minister had said. 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.
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