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Just over a year after the new Guyana Fire Service (GFS) Headquarters on Homestretch Avenue, Georgetown, was commissioned, the Government is undertaking several repairs to address defects identified in the building. On January 8, 2025, the new GFS Headquarters on Homestretch Avenue, Georgetown, was commissioned. The building was constructed at a cost of $614.5 million by Mohamed’s Enterprise – a company now sanctioned by the United States (US) Government. The company’s principals, US sanctioned and indicted, Opposition Leader Azruddin Mohamed and his father, Nazar Mohamed, are facing extradition to the US to face charges of wire fraud, mail fraud, money laundering over alleged gold smuggling and tax evasion. In a video posted to the Fire Service’s Facebook page on Thursday, Fire Chief Gregory Wickham disclosed that since occupying the building, staff have encountered several issues. “The specific issue I wish to make it abundantly clear [is] that from the moment we began occupying this structure, our headquarters, we have encountered several deficiencies and several issues that, over time, we had to be fixing in order to ensure that our staff have a good working environment,” Wickham said. According to him, the issues included a leaking roof, cracks in the walls and glass on the building, as amongst a vast majority of other issues.

“Such issues are for example, leaking roof, cracking of the walls, cracking of the glass on the surface of the building, poor issues and several moments we had to be looking at the fixtures in our lavatory washroom area, the plumbing work, ever so often we had to be effecting repairs over the years. At this point I wish to make it very clear that this building was constructed by Mohammed Enterprise,” Wickham said. In light of these issues, Wickham noted that the GFS, along with the Home Affairs Minister, decided to retender for the necessary works. The contract was awarded to Modern Engineering Supplies and Services at a cost of $7.2 million.
“These matters have been addressed in a holistic manner to the fact that after these defects were absorbed over a period of time, the Guyana Fire Service Administration and the Ministry of Home Affairs retendered for these works to be done. That contract was won by a contractor and as of the 6th of August 2026, that contractor has begun work, not fixing but changing those facilities that we had in the washroom areas. Like I said, that is a work in progress,” Wickham said. He also reiterated that the GFS has made significant strides in ensuring that its staff are equipped, ready and fit to respond to emergencies. He noted that firefighters are now being equipped with personal protective equipment, including breathing apparatus sets that allow them to work in environments that would not normally support life or breathing. He said the Fire Service takes pride in the health and welfare of its staff and remains committed to ensuring that firefighters operate in a good working environment. Wickham urged members of the public to have confidence that issues raised by firefighters are being attended to and acted upon by the relevant authorities.

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Alexander Leung and Alex Newton will represent Guyana at the Caribbean Cycling Union Caribbean Junior Road Cycling Championships in Belize on August 22 and 23.
Leung, who rides for Continental Cycling Club, and Newton of KFC Evolution will compete in the junior men’s individual time trial and road race.
The individual time trial will be contested over 20 kilometres (km) along Trial Boom Road on August 22, while the junior men’s road race will cover 93.6km on the Philip Goldson Highway the following day. The road race will comprise 12 laps.

Both cyclists will enter the championships after completing a two-week training programme at the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) World Cycling Centre Continental Development Satellite in Couva, Trinidad and Tobago.
Leung is in his final season at the junior level and has produced several strong performances recently. Newton has also shown good form and is regarded as a strong competitor when at his best.

National cycling coach Brentnol Carmichael will accompany the riders to Belize. Carmichael also recently completed a UCI Level Two Coaching Course, strengthening his technical knowledge ahead of the regional assignment.
The trip was confirmed after support from the Guyana Olympic Association and the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport helped to meet the team’s expenses.
The championships will bring together the Caribbean’s leading junior cyclists for two days of competition.

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Dear Editor,
We have officially crossed the uncanny valley, and Guyana’s political landscape is dangerously exposed. As our nation navigates an unprecedented economic boom and heightened geopolitical visibility, the democratisation of generative artificial intelligence (AI) has birthed a new era of frictionless fabrication.
Today, creating a hyper-realistic depiction of a Guyanese public official takes mere seconds. We are no longer dealing with crude Photoshop jobs; AI is now routinely weaponised to generate fabricated audio and video of public servants engaging in illicit, humiliating, or inflammatory acts, instantly broadcast across local Facebook pages and WhatsApp groups.
In the face of this epistemic crisis, legislative inertia in Georgetown is no longer an option. It is imperative that our national laws – specifically the Cybercrime Act of 2018 and our older, colonial-era defamation frameworks – be urgently re-examined and revised to hold individuals accountable when they misuse AI to sabotage public officials.
Historically, Guyanese law and the Constitution rightly protect free expression and political satire. However, generative AI breaks the traditional bounds of parody through sheer verisimilitude. In a society historically vulnerable to ethnic and political polarisation, a synthesised WhatsApp voice note of a minister uttering a racial slur or accepting a bribe does not provoke thought; it provokes unrest. Yet, perpetrators continually hide behind antiquated legal shields, claiming their deepfakes are mere “digital jokes”.
To understand the urgency of this statutory modernisation, we need only look at the global fallout of the past few months. In February 2026, France was rocked by the “Élysée Synthesis”, a scandal in which an AI-generated video depicted the French Prime Minister accepting a cash bribe. Before the video was debunked, markets dipped and riots erupted in Paris. In response, the French Parliament swiftly passed a Digital Integrity Law, which explicitly criminalises the unconsented, malicious biometric cloning of public figures.
Similarly, during South Korea’s April 2026 Parliamentary Elections, operatives utilised voice-cloning AI to release audio files of a prominent candidate using ethnic slurs. Rather than relying on sluggish civil defamation suits, Seoul updated its electoral laws to establish “algorithmic accountability”, holding individual uploaders directly liable for synthetic election interference.
By contrast, Guyana’s current legal framework is floundering in the face of this technology. Public figures are paralysed by traditional defamation standards that require proving actual malice and measurable damages. These standards were designed for print newspapers and traditional broadcasters, not a decentralised internet where anonymous prompt engineers can generate bespoke defamation at scale.
Updating our laws to hold AI abusers accountable is not an assault on our constitutional right to free speech; it is the preservation of a shared civic reality. Parliament must introduce specific legal categories for “malicious synthetic defamation”, mandate digital provenance protocols, and ensure that those who maliciously engineer algorithmic falsehoods face strict liability.
Democracy in a rapidly developing, diverse nation requires a baseline of empirical truth to function. If we refuse to edit our laws to punish those who use AI to poison that well, we are not protecting free expression. We are simply subsidising deception.

Yours respectfully,
Philip Inshanally

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President of the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ), Justice Winston Anderson, has rejected recent allegations of “panel fixing” at the regional court aimed at securing particular outcomes – something which he says strikes at the heart of judicial independence. On Friday, Justice Anderson issued a 9-page statement describing the claims made as “wholly untrue”.
The issue, he explained, stemmed from the composition of a CCJ interlocutory panel constituted to hear a procedural preliminary application in a matter involving Trinidad and Tobago – D’Almada v Trinidad and Tobago. Justice Anderson said a fellow CCJ judge was removed from that panel over dress code concerns and had nothing to do with the merits of the case or the anticipated outcome.
“At the time of the removal from the interlocutory panel and replacement by another colleague, I made it abundantly clear in writing that the Judge’s removal from that particular panel was based solely upon the issue of judicial attire and that it had nothing whatsoever to do with the Judge’s opinions, participation in judicial conferences or deliberations, or the expression of judicial views,” the CCJ President contended.

Pointing out that the composition of panels has always formed part of the administrative responsibilities of the court’s President, Justice Anderson contended that this long-established institutional practice aims at ensuring the orderly, efficient and impartial administration of justice, and was never exercised to influence the outcome of any proceedings.
“Among the allegations that have recently surfaced publicly, perhaps the most serious wound is the suggestion that panels of the Court have been constituted or altered in order to secure a particular outcome in a case. Such an allegation strikes at the very heart of judicial independence and public confidence in the administration of justice. It therefore warrants a clear and direct response. The allegation is wholly untrue,” he emphasised.
In fact, the CCJ President noted that during that panel hearing, all five Judges unanimously agreed that leave ought properly to have been granted to permit the substantive matter to proceed, and he directed the matter to Full Bench which includes the judge who had been removed.

Unfounded and untrue
Nervertheless, Justice Anderson went onto outline that CCJ judges, over the past decades, have consistently discharged their constitutional responsibilities independently, impartially and without regard to national origin, political consideration or personal interest. He said suggesting otherwise not only undermines an individual Judge, but confidence in Caribbean justice itself.
Contending that independence of the judiciary is the cornerstone upon the regional court was establish, Justice Anderson asserted that no CCJ Judge can or should be restrained from expressing their judicial views or deciding any matter based on their independent assessment of the law and the evidence.
“It is therefore with particular concern that I have noted suggestions in the public domain that I have sought to influence the outcome of cases before the Court. Those allegations are entirely unfounded and untrue,” he stated.
According to the CCJ President, judicial conferences in any appellate court usually involve spirited discussion, differing legal analyses and careful consideration of competing views before a final judgment is settled. This, he argued, is not evidence of disagreement but of Judges conscientiously performing their judicial functions.
“Throughout my judicial career, both as a Judge and now as President, I have regarded judicial independence as inviolable. It is a principle that I have consistently defended and will continue to defend,” Justice Anderson declared.
Moreover, he further strongly condemned in Friday’s statement the unauthorised disclosure and publication of confidential material relating to the internal deliberations and confidential correspondence of the CCJ – something which he says erodes trusts in the region court.
In fact, Heads of Judiciary from across the Caribbean earlier this week expressing grave concern over the disclosure of the confidential internal communications among the court’s Judges.
On Tuesday, the Heads of the Judiciary of Barbados, The Bahamas, Belize, Guyana, the Eastern Caribbean Supreme Court, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago stated they would not comment on the merits of statements or allegations attributed to individual Judges, nor on matters arising from the court’s internal deliberative or administrative processes but reaffirmed their confidence in the CCJ.
Further weighing in on the controversy, Attorney General (AG) Anil Nandlall also stressed that the CCJ is Guyana’s final court and, as such, must be respected.

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