Presidency’s 2019 capital spending approved
DPI, Guyana, Monday, December 10, 2018
The Committee of Supply has approved over two billion dollars for the Ministry of the Presidency’s Capital and Current expenditure.
Minister of State, Joseph Harmon said among the capital project to be undertaken in the new year is the upgrade of the electrical infrastructure at the Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission.
Minister of State Joseph Harmon.
“The Lands and Surveys Commission is under better management and in fact, the sum of $30Million has been allocated for electrical upgrades at the head office. Because of the changes that have occurred over the years, and the quality of the equipment being utilised in the building the decision was taken to have the entire building rewired. It should be noted that no upgrade was done in this regard in over 40 years,” Minister Harmon explained.
The State Minister also says that in excess of $12Million will be spent to improve the National Intelligence Centre (NIC) as the government continues to invest in national security.
“This $12.5Million is to basically to improve the capacity of NIC to store information and provide better coverage for the national intelligence and security system. We are purchasing equipment to create an offline backup system for the storage of critical data for closed circuit television sites.”
According to the Minister, there are several of these sites around the country and the information is stored in a command centre. However, he noted that there is “a problem with the storage capacity of the system… It only provides a certain number of hours of storage and to provide the length of storage that the system requires will require some additional equipment. So, we are talking about expanding the sites and creating a backup system,” he explained
Minister Harmon was at the time responding to questions put by opposition Members of Parliament regarding sums allocated in the 2019 budgetary estimates for current and capital spending by the Ministry of the Presidency.
Kidackie Amsterdam.
Image: Keno George.