Costly air and sea searches and monitoring of unidentified maritime targets are to be reduced considerably and Seychelles will be able to better coordinate its response to any illegal fishing and other activities and threats in its waters.

These will be possible now that six surveillance radars installed on five islands are fully operational.

It was after considering the vastness of Seychelles’ Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) which spans an area of some 1.3 million square kilometres and the challenges faced when protecting such an extensive area, that the government, with support from India, found it necessary to improve our coastal area surveillance capabilities to ensure security of our citizens and the resources on the outer islands and our maritime borders.

The coastal surveillance radar system (CSRS) project includes a total of six radar stations based on five different islands namely Mahé (1), Alphonse (1), Farquhar (1), Astove (1) and Assumption (2) which are all managed through a central control centre based at the Seychelles Coast Guard (SCG) base at Ile Perseverance.

The project was officially commissioned and handed over to the Seychelles government in a ceremony at the coast guard base at Ile Perseverance on Monday afternoon.

Work on the ground to prepare for the installation of the radars started way back in 2012 when a group of military officers started work alongside local and foreign partners. They dedicated their time, skills and effort using resources available to them to ensure the successful completion of the project.

Rao Inderjit Singh, Minister of State, Defence  on behalf of the Indian government who together with Joel Morgan, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Transport unveiled the plaque to commission the CSRS earlier on Monday visited the radar station on Alphonse.

“I was very much impressed by the state-of-the-art technology in place and I feel the utility of this asset can be optimised through effective training of local operators,” Minister Singh pointed out.

“The landmark project is a testimony of our strong bond of friendship that has not only stood the test of time but has also deepened over the years,” Minister Singh remarked when addressing senior military officers and other guests present to witness the event.

Designed to secure the sea lanes and safeguard our EEZ from numerous threats and economic offenders, Minister Singh noted that the strategic significance of the radars cannot be overstated.

He went on to add that the project has “taken our partnership in the field of defence and maritime security to a new level”.

Minister Morgan for his part noted that the completion “of yet another important project with India illustrates our combined vision to make the Blue economy central to our economic development”.

Minister Morgan pointed out that the agreement India and Seychelles signed last year on the Blue economy has received an important boost with the commissioning of the CSRS.

He pointed out that the SCG will get a better maritime picture of part of  our territorial and EEZ waters thus making detection of unidentified maritime targets easier and their real time monitoring will be reduced substantially cutting down on costly air and sea searches which were conducted up until now.

Lieutenant Colonel Lesley Benoiton took the guests on a tour of the central control centre and gave them a detailed briefing on the operational functionalities of the different equipment and made a demonstration on how illegal threats are detected, identified and monitored.

Both ministers Singh and Morgan expressed gratitude to the different stakeholders and contractors who have worked on the project namely the joint monitoring committee, BEL, Airtel, TIL, the SCG, and the Island Development Company (IDC).

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