Head of the Guyana Lands and Survey Commission (GL&SC), Mr Trevor Benn, recently revealed that steps have been taken to address the shortage of technical staff at the entity.
During a recent discussion with radio announcer Stan Gouveia on the programme called the Hot Steat, Benn said that most of the members of staff are individuals who just left high school or technical institutes.
The Commissioner said, “But across the world, the minimum you must have to work at an agency like ours is a first degree. But we are taking steps. We started a conversation with the University of Twente in the Netherlands and we are working with the Ordnance Survey (which is the national mapping agency for Great Britain).”
Further to this, Benn said that a partnership is being established with the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation to create opportunities for training. Benn said he wants to send some members of staff for training in the areas of importance such as geometrics so they can help to refine the way the Commission works.
Importantly, the Commissioner noted that this training will help in reducing the processing time for applications.
In this regard, Benn said, “We have implemented a new regime of capacity building to make staff more ready to deal with issues at hand. We have not been proud of the way we operated in terms of processing applications and I want to bring down that time.”
Additionally, Benn noted that the Commission has not done a remapping of the country in over 50 years and it does not have the technical people to get this done. He said that the training that is forthcoming will help in this regard along with the procurement of modern equipment.
