Road to Brazil, deep water harbour will be incredible achievements

CONSTRUCTING a road to Brazil and building a deep water harbour will be incredible achievements when the PPP/C gets it implemented. ‘IDB to fund studies on road to Brazil, deep water harbour’ as reported in the SN of December 22, 2013 is exciting for the potential it suggests. 

The possibility of the Chinese financing and building a fork before Linden to connect Orealla on the Corentyne River and eventually to Crabwood Creek should be explored.  Not only would this benefit Linden and Berbice but the entire economy of Guyana. It would open up the interior beyond imagination especially with the certainty of climate change resulting in flooding of the coast.

We must be very careful however. Constructing such a road should avoid any community acquiring veto power which perpetually holds the entire nation to ransom. Of course there should be branching road linkages to Linden. For security reasons and under no circumstances should it be the main thoroughfare to Lethem via Linden. Forcing travellers to pass through Linden should be an option, not a requirement, so none becomes a sacrificial hostage. Opening high quality restaurants and hotels as a rest stop, even overnight hotel layovers, would be Linden’s own beckoning advertisement of welcome. Suddenly the Chinese do not look so bad, do they?

Relief in road construction was in fact implemented when the PNC reconstructed Sheriff St starting from the East Coast  directly to the East Bank leading to the airport. It completely bypassed commercial Georgetown which became an option of personal choice.
Our politicians entrusted with our security must learn from the past and avoid endangering people’s lives before it occurs.  During the 2012 Linden protests, travellers passing through from Lethem were routinely attacked, robbed and their vehicles burned and passengers brutalized. Three Guyanese lost their lives and millions of tax payers money was paid out in tribute to irresponsibility. That an illegal toll gate has recently been built to tax travellers is a sign of more to come unless addressed.

Buxton’s strategic location on the East Coast not only facilitated its 2006 crime spree but escalated   unnecessary racial fears among innocent passing travellers. Harassment was routine.   Noticeable pride ‘that Buxton people stopped a train’ of a colonial Governor from passing is well known. Buxton’s history was repeated as a good lesson. That the PNC government scrapped the railways has not been to Buxton or its credit.   Karmic payback? Similarly, any Amalia Falls originated power lines which snakes through to the coast should not be laid through Linden. Of course they should be linked. Safeguarding an entire nation’s productivity with a constant supply of electricity must be paramount. Prudence requires it must not become an opportunity   to be held for ransom or a pointer for acrimony and bitterness. Everyone will suffer adversely.

As the PNC did in Georgetown, without negatively impacting on its growth, Linden’s development and economic progress would impose its owned shepherded urgency to effectively attract and maintaining investors’ confidence for their upward mobility. Being penny wise and pound foolish cannot be the best option especially in consideration that Rome was not built in a day.

SULTAN MOHAMED

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