Prime Minister Brigadier (ret’d) Mark Phillips on Wednesday signalled a major shift in Guyana’s firefighting strategy, announcing that the country is moving away from a fully centralised model toward greater community participation in fire response.
Delivering the feature address at the opening of the Guyana Fire Service Senior Officers’ Conference, the Prime Minister said the government’s vision is to build a system that is not only fast but trusted and responsive in every region.
“It is for the Guyana Fire Service to ensure a high level of confidence in its work… We must not only be fast, we must be trusted to be fast, but to achieve that level of responsiveness we must fundamentally rethink how we deploy our resources,” he said.
Highlighting the challenges posed by Guyana’s geography, he explained that densely populated coastal communities and widely spaced hinterland settlements require different approaches to fire protection.
“You cannot put a full-service fire station at every corner in the Rupununi… You cannot afford a fleet of hydraulic platforms in every village in Region Two,” he said.
To address these limitations, the Prime Minister proposed decentralising firefighting by equipping communities with smaller response units capable of acting before larger teams arrive.
“I would like to see every Neighbourhood Democratic Council (NDC) having its own small fire tender. Just imagine a small agile unit that can immediately respond to reports of fire… to hold the line until the larger tender arrives,” he said.
Phillips declared that “the era of the centralised fire service is coming to an end,” as Guyana transitions to “a hybrid model: a strong, modern, professional core complemented by decentralised, community-based units manned by the communities themselves.”
He stressed that such a shift would save lives if communities are properly trained to know when to engage and when to retreat from dangerous situations.
“If we can put the power to fight fires in the hands of our communities, we would have done more to save lives than any piece of equipment ever could,” the Prime Minister noted.
He also reminded officers that while government continues to invest in infrastructure and equipment, the human element remains the most critical factor in emergency response.
“Fire is a good servant but also indiscriminate… it is hungry, fast and merciless. It is the task of the fire service to ensure that fire remains the servant and never becomes the master of our people,” he said.
Urging officers to embrace innovation and reform, he concluded, “I want you to leave with a sense of urgency… our country is growing, the risks are evolving, and we must evolve faster. We must build the most professional, responsive and trusted fire service in Guyana.”
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