The Guyana International Conference Centre (GICC) at Turkeyen is ready for its first international conference – the 19th Meeting of the Rio Group – scheduled for tomorrow and from which the Turkeyen Declaration is expected to flow.
General Manager Jagdish Sukhu yesterday displayed the building’s readiness and gave a tour of it to a group of journalists from the Dominican Republic. So far, the Rio Summit will involve nine heads from Latin America and the Caribbean.
“We have closed off all work,” he said, “all we are doing is keeping the place clean.” Workers could be seen sprucing up in preparation for tomorrow’s event.
The air conditioning system is in working order and Sukhu said there is a standby generator, which switches on automatically if there is a power outage.
Wireless internet (WIFI) has been set up and is accessible throughout the centre, Sukhu said yesterday.
There are no anticipated problems with noise from the vehicular traffic, as the road outside the GICC will be closed to traffic during the summit. However, even if there were a flow of vehicular traffic on the Railway Embankment, Sukhu said, noise would not have been a problem because of the soundproof design of the GICC.
Seating accommodation is more than sufficient for the summit, he said. The main conference hall has seating capacity for 372 persons and there are five smaller conference rooms and a business centre in adjoining buildings. Sukhu said additional accommodation was being provided for members of the media covering the event.
The audio system has also been tested and it is ready to go. There have been problems with the audio system during past events at the GICC.
Tomorrow security will be tight and will be handled by the Guyana Police Force. Yesterday, security was a little relaxed and vehicles and persons were not being stopped and searched on entry to the GICC.
Meanwhile, media accreditation was ongoing at the media accreditation centre located within the GICC. According to Melissa Edwards, the media accreditation centre has outfitted all of the Brazilian journalists with ID cards and they were at the time focusing on finishing up the Venezuelan journalists. She said that one country has as many as 50 media professionals here to cover the Rio Group Meeting.
According to Edwards, some of the foreign journalists have been given temporary passes until their full accreditation passes would have been approved.
A visit to the media accreditation centre yesterday found that many foreign journalists, having been accredited, working on computers there.
The GICC, built by the government and the people of China was handed over to the Guyana government on February 16, last year. It was also recently furnished by the Chinese.
