the Guyana Police Force

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An E-governance tower will be erected in two weeks on the grounds of the University of Guyana Berbice Campus (UGBC) Johns location on the Corentyne. This is according to Director of UGBC, Prof. Daizal Samad who recently granted permission to the Office of the President (OP) to begin construction of the structure which will link both UGBC campuses with each other, along with the integration of the Turkeyen Campus in Georgetown.“It will absorb a little bit of space, maybe 100 meters but I’ve given permission for that to happen”, he said.Government is erecting 55 towers in Regions Two, Three, Four, Five, Six, Nine and 10 to roll out its Information, Communication and Technology programme. The erection of the towers began in Region Four and has attracted objections from residents in Plaisance and Triumph/ Beterverwagting.Prof. Daizal SamadThe tower, which would have 30 years warranty will be constructed by the Chinese contractor, Huawei. The contractor has sub-contracted certain parts of the project to Colombian, Trinidadian and Guyanese contractors.Prof. Samad stated that upon the completion of the tower, which is expected to be in use for the new academic year (September 2013), millions of dollars used to shuttle lecturers to meetings in Georgetown and other locations will be saved by the campus. UGBC pays a hefty bill of over $8M every six months to shuttle lecturers back and forth between campuses.  “Imagine what we can do with $16m every year—but let’s say we save $12M– that can be used to improve services to students, including banish this idea that students have to pay to use the computer centre”.He stated that the range of the tower will cover both Tain and Johns “so we will have full connectivity between the two locations–even better, we will be hooked up to Turkeyen which means that the days of traveling back and forth will soon come to an end—thank goodness because that will save taxpayers oodles of money and put our travelling lecturers at much less of a danger, the road being what the roads are”.He noted that all of the students will gain from the initiative “and schools too can piggyback on the UGBC network”. Also, the Guyana Police Force (GPF) can benefit from the tower. “There will be E- libraries through this e- tower so everybody’s reading online and the company contracted to build the tower has gifted two teleconference facilities—one at Turkeyen and the other at UGBC, so that when we have classes, the classes could be run from these teleconference centres”.He commented on the fact that a lot of persons have been objecting to the ideas of erection of e- governance towers across the country, including the Plaisance, East Coast Demerara community.But according to a Georgetown Hospital Physicist, the e- governance tower would only be harmful if someone is within range of the emission, which is in the stratosphere. It was noted that only super towers that are sometimes as large as an entire block would be harmful. As such, large companies build them in isolated areas.Plaisance residents were the first to reject the project because Government wants to erect the tower on their Community Centre ground. Besides the absence of consultation and Government’s choice of location, residents were worried about the health implications, primarily cancer that the radiation emanating from the tower might have.“I think that’s a different kind of electrical pulse system. In Toronto which has the most concentrated cluster of radio stations in the world, by far—well Torontorians didn’t get up in arms against that….so I don’t think there is any danger—the benefits are tremendous. It is up to us, though, to make sure that all safety precautions are in place and that whatever is put up at taxpayers’ expense remains safe and secure”, Samad stated. Therefore, he is insisting that UGBC should have a Head of Security.Project Manager of the E- governance tower programme, Alexei Ramotar had said on many occasions that the telecommunication tower would not have a negative impact on people’s health. He said that the Self-Supporting Telecommunication Tower is being built according to international standards.Ramotar enlightened that the towers have varying heights: 36 metres, 42 metres, 54 metres and 60 metres. In addition, these towers are no different to those erected by the Guyana Telephone and Telegraph Company.