MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Falklands demining team have recovered over 3,000 anti-personnel mines and over 150 anti-tank mines.
Programme Manager for Fenix Insight Ltd’s Falklands Demining Programme Office Guy Marot ( MercoPress) SINCE their deployment in October 2016 through to June 2017, the BACTEC teams have worked on 47 minefield areas from Fox Bay, Port Howard and Goose Green to the Stanley area. The team will now leave for three months before continuing the current phase.
Most recently opened to the public was the wider South Common area including the coastline and a wide strip of land east of Eliza Cove all the way up to the FIDF Rookery Bay Range, said Environmental Planning Officer, Nick Rendell.
He emphasised that this did not include Rookery Bay itself (which is still fenced with “danger minefield” signs) but encompassed a large area of coastline “which
will be of good recreational value in future.”
The seven BACTEC teams have completed 30 minefield sites which are to be released in due course. From the completed minefields the teams have recovered over 3,000 anti-personnel mines and over 150 anti-tank mines.
The majority of the completed tasks are in the Stanley area including Mount Longdon, but others in Goose Green have also been cleared.
Work in Fox Bay and Port Howard will continue when the teams return in September. The total area released during this period is over 3.5 million square metres (roughly, 900acres).
Dynasafe BACTEC Technical Director, John Hare said that he and the Project Manager, Julius Unsing, would like thank the whole community for the support they had received.
“In particular we would like to thank Colin Summers and PWD, Critter and Myles Lee at Port Howard, Keith and Glynis at Goose Green, Shiralee and Andy and Leon and Helen at Fox Bay, plus Keith Heathman, as well as so many others who have assisted us.
“Thank you for your support and we look forward to returning in September to continue our work.”
Mr. Hare explained that the current phase of work would end in March 2018, and would include Mt Longdon clearance, continued technical survey in Fox Bay, clearance in Goose Green and clearance along the Murrell River.
Programme Manager for Fenix Insight Ltd’s Falklands Demining Programme Office Guy Marot told Penguin News the contracts for Phase 5b, starting in April 2018, had yet to be awarded but were likely to include all the remaining areas including Yorke Bay and the Murrell Peninsula.
Initial analysis of the effort required to complete the remaining minefields has been carried out and had confirmed the difficulty and uncertainty of predicting how long the final tasks would take, he said.
Source Penguin News
Video Falkland Islands TV
Top Comments
Disclaimer & comment rules-
-
-
Read all commentsMA
Jun 25th, 2017 - 10:16 am +7The fact that the mines were laid shows how little Argentina cares about the islands or he people who live there.
Typical Argentinian.....mess up the place and complain that someone else isn't clearing it up fast enough.
Have you volunteered to pay for the mess you left ?
DT- Grenades under kids desk lids in the classrooms - no it came direct from the army lads who went in there to clear and check and make safe before locals did.
Jun 28th, 2017 - 09:10 pm +6What do we want from Argentina? - the right to live our lives in peace and respecting the difference in opinions between us and to respect standard Internanational law- example- to allow an airline from one country to fly over yours on the way to another country - as per standard IATA rules!
Undo all the Kirschener hassle when she tore up agreements on Fisheries conservation and policing etc would help. Likewise on oil - with Menem we had our area- Argentina had its - and the bit in the middle was to be 50:50 if anything there. Cannot be fairer than that?
For them to honour their side in full of the 1999 Agreement - where they committed to doing away in schools and papers etc of their 1982 Dictatorship Islands names - eg Puerto Argentina and all the others.
There are just a few goodwill gestures Argentina owes us - we owe them none at this stage as they caused all the bad feelings.
They need to put their side of all that to right first - then- and only then- after a period of a few years when a bit of confidence and nicer atmosphere is settled - could we start looking at other mutual improvements as they arise.
That these mines were laid shows how little Argentina cares about our Islands and yet they bleat on about being incomplete without them.
Jun 24th, 2017 - 01:02 pm +5Commenting for this story is now closed.
If you have a Facebook account, become a fan and comment on our Facebook Page!