PEOPLE see paved roads popping up, even in village back-streets, with rural residential dams, narrow loam laneways and decades-old pathways becoming smooth tar-black roadways. But citizens still complain.This graphic visual of seeing a paved modern road outside our homes lifts our spirits, and causes us to feel motivated, and that we’re playing a role on the 21st Century world stage.

Paved rural residential roadways provide a graphic visual of development of Guyana now decidedly a modern, 21st Century nation.
In Berbice, the Region, under the management of Regional Chairman David Armogan, is directing the surfacing of rural residential streets in the entire Canje community, and along the villages of the Corentyne, and East Bank Berbice.
Although local contractors work with sloth and a lackadaisical attitude, the transformation of villages across Berbice, in this one development of modern roadways, moves with decided progress. And people love it.
What makes this road construction initiative possible is the recent opening up of three bitumen plants in Berbice. These simple heavy-duty plants work to produce bitumen, with trucks and workmen now able to work on roads round-the-clock.
But, there’s a challenge. Berbice, like everywhere in the country, faces a critical shortage of skills and labour. So instead of seeing several crews working the villages to transform all roads in a very short time, the jobs must be split up and worked on by a schedule.
Government has allocated trucks, tractors and road building equipment to different areas of Guyana, including rollers and bitumen dispensing machines.
This road construction initiative of the State not only transforms communities, but showcases a very graphically visual evidence of community, on-the-ground, development happening: people see and feel the new Guyana we’ve become.
While the State spent the last couple decades stabilising our macro-economic socio-economic structure, a lot of it behind the scenes policy and financial legislation stuff, we now see our ability to move out into communities and transform how people experience their day.
Guyanese see their quality of life raise in leaps and bounds, with the stunning housing development nationwide the driver of the new Guyana. Now, with paved roadways to add to their homes and house lots and new cars, Guyanese have joined the developed world.
Of course we’ve got tremendous problems to overcome, including road construction contractors the State hires who do sloppy work, and cheat on quality.
Berbicians still complain that much of their developmental desires go unfulfilled, including a long-standing appeal for road lights and phone lines along the straight stretch of Corentyne highway from the Berbice Bridge road going east.
We see similar requests across Guyana, where residents want community development speeded up, and blame Government for the bureaucracy and sloth they perceive.
In fairness to Government, the State faces a critical crisis of skills, with expertise, efficient middle managers, and hard-working supervisors hard to come by. In fact, a lot of the problems citizens encounter in dealing with State agencies stem from poor management and lackadaisical supervisory work.
Indeed, one of Guyana’s long-standing problems has been in maintenance of public property. While Government allocates budgets for much of the work, poor middle management in the Public Service and across municipalities frustrate citizens, as they see things fall apart.
We’ve got to institute new systems to compensate for the Guyanese public service being so insensitive in its inefficient service to citizens.
These things are crucial, for us to know where citizens feel squeezed and uncared for: while Guyanese blame “Government” for all and sundry, much of the problems Guyanese encounter in State service sectors stem from State staff, contractors and a public service that got gutted and became a political animal in the 1970s and 1980s. Recovering from that takes time, and careful strategic leadership.
Even in our Police Force, we’ve got tremendous work to do to professionalise police service to citizens, and to eradicate bribery and corruption. Thus it is with the Justice system, as well.
We must exercise the courage, foresight, insight, and hindsight, to tackle these issues, as Guyanese face these issues with confusion and consternation, not realising that Government Ministers and the President cannot go personally to clean up the zoo or install a light on a street, or supervise the efficient paving of a residential street at Adelphi, Canje, Berbice.
The State entrusts such tasks to its managers, supervisors and employees. And when they fail, it’s impractical to fire them, because our nation just doesn’t possess the skills pool to replace erring public servants.
In the State health care system, in public education, in development of roadways, for example the four-lane East Bank Demerara highway, we citizens blame Government when delays and bad work show up, not realising that Government itself is often frustrated at sloppy work, poor service and selfish public service in this country.
We see the stalling of development projects both from private contractors, who themselves lack a full complement of skilled and competent managers, and from the Public Service, the State entity on which we all rely.
Government may want to seriously consider developing a national skills strategy for rapid acquisition of necessary expertise. We’ve reached a stage of development where the demand for professional and competent middle managers and supervisors is increasing, fast.
The problem impacts not only Government and the State, but also the Private Sector, with the rich, big firms snapping up the small crop of professional, competent managers and supervisors available in the country.
Like the woman in Gangaram, Canje, complained when she contemplated the newly paved street in front of her house aback the village, and the new paved roadways that transformed her village, “with sloppy work from the contractor, how long this would last?”
Residents complain not only of sloppy work, but poor laws that allow private businesses to use heavy duty trucks on rural residential streets built for light vehicles.
These challenges we must face and tackle not ignore. Citizens across Guyana see Government at fault when they encounter such anomalies as poor public works and inefficient public service.
So, while they see paved roads popping up all around them, Government bringing development right to their doorstep, they reserve their praise because contractors and public service in our nation still generally treat citizens with disrespect, disdain and disregard.
For us to transform the image of Government, for citizens to see that development is lifting their lifestyles, we’ve got to conquer this problem of the acquisition of professional, efficient, competent supervisors and middle managers.
Only then would Guyanese see development like paved rural residential roads popping up and express their appreciation with full confidence.