Participants of map reading, navigation course express appreciation for opportunity

Learning how to navigate through maps and terrain is an essential skill for a variety of professions. Persons in the fields of law enforcement, medicine, and especially in the natural resources sector need this skill to be able to navigate difficult, as well as unknown territory.

For this reason, the Guyana Mining School and Training Centre Incorporated (GMSTCI) began its map reading and navigation short course on Monday.

While the programme was initially slated to begin in March, it was brought forward to February due to the high volume of applications.

“A key element of the government’s development agenda is the development of human resources in each sector. It was in this light that the course was designed and advertised. Initially, we were expecting about 100 persons, mostly miners, but we were not prepared for the overwhelming response from the public,” Administrator of GMSTCI, Vaughn Felix disclosed in an interview on Tuesday.

Participants included students from the University of Guyana, members of the Guyana Police Force’s Criminal Investigation Department (CID), and persons employed at the National Data Management Authority (NDMA).

Jahrol London, who is pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree in Civil Engineering, highlighted that the programme does not only benefit miners but other persons in the technical field.

“Navigation in engineering is extremely essential, especially if you’re going to an area you’re not familiar with…. Let’s say I’m going out into the fields, whereby somebody would have given me a reference to where I need to be, the map would help me to locate the distance.

“Also, if I go and I find a particular plot of land on which I would like to propose a building to be erected, I would need to be able to make reference to that plot. So, this is where the map reading and the coordinates would come into play,” he said.

Assistant Superintendent of the Crime Scene Unit at CID, Ray Marcurius, pointed out that navigation plays a major role in crime fighting and crime solving as well, through the enhancement of the Police Force’s crime scene investigation.

“Our main task at the Crime Scene Unit is to visit crime scenes across the country. That would include crime scenes within the city, as well as within the hinterland regions. A lot of the time when we’re visiting crime sceneswithin the hinterland regions,those crime scenes may be off-road, might be in the middle of the forest, or there might be just a trail leading to this crime scene. So, having been on this course… it will assist us greatly, in terms of helping us to locate and identify the address and location of the crime scenes,” he said.

Crime Scene Investigator at the CID Crime Lab, Khadijah Allie, shared a similar perspective, noting that map reading and navigation comes in especially handy when accessing rural, often hard-to-access terrain.

“In terms of visiting crime scenes in the interior areas, map reading would be very interesting, and it would be very important to locate certain areas that might not be visible, and areas that you might not even be aware of. So, it’s very, very beneficial in that way,” she said.

The participants expressed appreciation for the opportunity and urged other Guyanese to take advantage of the programme as well.

Any interested member of the public can join by calling the Guyana Mining School and Training Centre Inc. (GMSTCI) on 592-225-2862 or emailing them at mining_school@ggmc.gov.gy.

Classes will be held from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm daily, at no cost to participants.

The programme will last for three weeks and concludes in late March.