By Daniel DaCosta
Stabroek News
June 23, 2001

The government has not yet made a decision as to how it will acquire the investigative skill required to determine the causes of fire, according to Cabinet Secretary, Dr Roger Luncheon.

The capacity of the Guyana Fire Service to investigate and report definitively on the causes of fires has been called into question because of its inability to pronounce on the conflagrations of April 9 which destroyed a number of business places on Robb and Regent Streets and those that obliterated the GRL Building on Water Street and the MMA building at Onverwagt.

As a result there is some doubt as to whether it would be able to say what caused the fire last week that destroyed the building on Homestretch Avenue that housed a number of government agencies including the Ministry of Housing and the Central Housing and Planning Authority.

Dr Luncheon told reporters at an Office of the President press conference yesterday that there was some basis for the claim that the investigative capacity of the Fire Service was not what it should be.

He observed that the insurance companies which had insured a number of buildings, had refused to accept the technical input of the Fire Service into the investigations of the earlier fires.

Dr Luncheon noted that because of the commercial implications as a result of the recent increase in fires the government now had to determine what resources it would need to respond to the problem with. He said that a consideration would be whether it should be a a purely private sector function or whether the government should become involved by attracting to Guyana the firms with the requisite investigative skills.

Asked about the preservation of fire sites, Dr Luncheon explained that access to the site shortly after a fire would not necessarily be inconsistent with the type of investigation the Fire Service could conduct. But he noted that there was no doubt that vagrants and other persons routinely access these sites without permission.

He conceded that that there was no provision in the budget under the Ministry of Home Affairs for upgrading the investigative capacity of the Fire Service but said that the acquisition of skills would not necessarily be reflected in the Ministry of Home Affairs budget. He said that the reason for its absence could be explained by the fact that the ministry was probably waiting for a more definitive assessment of the needs in this area.

With regard to the capability of the Fire Service, Dr Luncheon said that $130 million had been allocated to it for the acquisition of two fire tenders.