– brand new passport office, ‘E’ Division HQ almost ready

THE mining town of Linden is seeing infrastructural development of all sorts, the latest being the construction of a dedicated passport and immigration office in Retrieve.
When construction is completed, which is in a matter of weeks, no longer will residents of Region 10 have to seek passport and other documentation services at the National Insurance Scheme building, as the one-storey building comes equipped with spacious waiting room, interview rooms, washrooms and loads of other facilities. It also comes equipped with air conditioning.

A passport service was first introduced to Linden in August 2016, which meant that Lindeners no longer had to travel all the way to Georgetown to either renew their passports or replace them if they were lost, damaged or otherwise unserviceable. All applicants had to do was submit their applications on either Tuesdays or Wednesdays, and uplift the document the following Thursday. They were, however, unable to apply for first-time passports; that particular little errand had to be done in GT.

When done, the passport office will also be expected to facilitate the processing of such other documents as birth and death certificates, as is all part of the current administration’s goal to decentralise certain key services.

In another few weeks as well, the $80M state-of-the-art ‘E’ Division headquarters will have been completed, replacing the old wooden Mackenzie Police Station. Funding for the construction of the massive two-storey building, which measures approximately 135ft by 45ft, was facilitated by the Government of Guyana through the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB).

According to officials on the ground, when completed, the facility will greatly improve the Division’s day-to-day operations owing to the additional space it now has. Former Divisional Commander, Mr Fazil Karimbaksh had said back in December 2017 when construction began that the new facility will have certain advantages, in that staff will no longer be cramped for space, which had in the past led to various departments having to be housed at other stations in the Division.

“We’re very appreciative of this new building that’s going to come on stream, as it will house all our departments,” Karimbaksh had said, adding: “So the people of Region 10 in particular will have better service, and we will be operating at our full capacity in terms of our departments. “It will be more comfortable too.” Meantime, the Police Department is operating out of make-shift offices in other structures within its compound, until the completion of the reconstruction process.