Aviation authorities across the region are working towards establishing a Caribbean Air Safety Oversight System (CASOS), which they hope to take to regional heads for approval.
Head of the Guyana Civil Aviation Authority Zulficar Mohammed in a recent interview with Stabroek News said the aim of this establishment was to facilitate more sharing of resources in the Caribbean and it could evolve into a Regional Civil Aviation Authority. According to Mohammed, the regional aviation bodies are looking at ways in which they could assist each other with human and technical resources.
However, Mohammed said this would mean that Caribbean nations would have to work towards harmonising regulations so that when they share personnel, for instance engineers, they could move from one country to another and operate freely and safely knowing that what obtains in one country also obtains in another. Down the line too, he said, CASOS could also represent the region at the level of the International Civil Aviation Authority.
“It could eventually evolve into a regional entity rather than individual state authorities,” he said.
Transport Minister Robeson Benn during a previous interview with this newspaper had spoken of developing a regional partnership to intervene as needed, particularly in the area of search and rescue, after an Air Services Limited aircraft crash in Region Eight last year killed three persons. After news of the crash was published, Guyana’s ability to conduct search and rescue operations had been called into question. The cause of the crash is still to be made available.
During that interview Benn and Mohammed had acknowledged that the current system had some shortcomings; in terms of equipment, and that the aviation body depended on the private agencies and aircraft operators to provide aircraft for rescue and extraction equipment. “We don’t have a helicopter with the requisite equipment for these kinds of operations but we have specially trained ground troops from GDF that would go in on foot and they are fully co-ordinated to conduct ground searching,” Mohammed had said.
The Guyana Defence Force (GDF) recently acquired two Bell 206 helicopters, which are to be outfitted with stretchers and other devices to assist in search and rescue operations.
