By Vanessa Braithwaite

AFTER two months in office, the Linden Mayor and Town Council has successfully secured the return of the Kara Kara toll booth to the mining town. Linden Mayor Carwyn Holland made this announcement on Monday, noting that a motion was passed during an emergency meeting last week for the toll to be reinstituted.
The booth will be gazetted and operations will commence earliest.
Mayor Holland praised Minister of Legal Affairs Basil Williams for his intervention in returning the toll booth to Linden.
During the recent Local Government Elections campaign, Minister Williams had made an open promise to the people of Linden to have the booth returned as soon as the Council was sworn in.
Mayor Holland said the minister has made good on his promise. This came at a time when the cash-strapped Council is in dire need to offset its $200M debt and cover basic monthly expenses.
The Kara Kara toll booth that was established in 1997 was disbanded in 2013 by former Minister of Local Government Norman Whittaker.
The purpose of the booth was to garner funds from heavy-duty trucks transporting lumber and other resources to and from the Interior.
According to reports, the booth was disbanded to accommodate the operations of lumber giant Bai Shan Lin.
As a result of this subsidised operation, the Council lost close to $250M, former IMC Chairman Orin Gordon had said. Minister Williams described this decision by the previous administration as a move to stymie the progress of the town.
“They never wanted you to thrive, they took away all of your financial abilities to spend money to look after yourselves… you use to take fees from those large trucks passing through Linden, the heavy lumber trucks and the bauxite container trucks and you used to get a reasonable income from that as a Town Council… 35 per cent of those revenues constituted your budget in this town of Linden, said the minister.
In addition to the toll booth, the Council has secured an increase in the yearly subvention from the Government and is looking to also increase the toll for the Wismar/Mackenzie Bridge.