National Border Institute to be established to protect country’s territorial integrity – Harmon

The Government will be establishing a National Border Institute that will conduct research to allow the protection of Guyana’s territorial integrity and deal with matters regarding the country’s air space and continental shelf, however, the cost is still to be determined.

The border institute according to Minister of State, Joseph Harmon would be a semi-autonomous body with a board of directors to be chaired initially by Vice President and Foreign Affairs Minister, Carl Greenidge.

The board will constitute members from the Attorney General’s Chambers, the University of Guyana, the Lands and Surveys Commission, the Maritime Department, the Civil Aviation Authority, the National Archive, among others.

The expertise of former ambassadors and other persons with knowledge of border issues would also be solicited.

“This is a very important matter in our view because the border institute is a repository of all documents, maps, charts and so on that has to do with the territorial integrity issues that we deal with, Suriname border, the Venezuela border issue, the issues in the EEZ all of these are matters which are important to us…so the idea is that all of these matters be placed under one institute,” Harmon told media operatives.

He said Minister Greenidge related to the cabinet that these records were in a deplorable state, hence the move in this direction.

Harmon said all the documents, maps and charts would be displayed in a proper manner and all the persons with the institutional memory of these issues would be consulted.

He noted that as the years go by there must be records to show what transpired.