-Ramjattan urges Lindeners to don’t stop the progress

THE town of Linden will be transformed into a major commercial hub, with a transportation terminal that will accommodate buses and other vehicles that will be plying the Linden to Lethem route. This will precede the highly-anticipated Linden to Lethem Highway, expected to open up avenues of transport and trade between Guyana and Brazil and other South American nations. With the expected increase in traffic, Linden will be regarded as a major commercial hub, rather than a mere Gateway to the City.

This move is anticipated to expand the economic landscape of the town, and will have a domino effect on the region’s other sectors such as tourism and agriculture.

The bearer of this bit of good news to residents of Region Ten (Upper Demerara-Berbice), who were part of the mammoth crowd assembled at the Bayroc Community Centre ground on Sunday evening, was none other than the Prime Ministerial Candidate of the APNU-AFC and Minister of Public Security Khemraj Ramjattan. “We will not pass Linden and go straight to Georgetown,” Minister Ramjattan said. “We are going to ensure that there is a stop; a stop must be made here. So we are going to have enhanced commercial activities; that is an important piece of infrastructure that we want to do here in Region Ten,” he added.

The proposed urbanisation of the township, he said, will be complemented with an upgraded Linden to Lethem Highway, which will allow for the advances in infrastructure to not stop in Linden, but to have continuity all the way to Georgetown.

FEASIBILITY STUDY
Already, the feasibility study for the rehabilitation of the highway has been completed, and the installation of lights has already started along the thoroughfare.
Similar upgrades of highways will be completed across the country, Ramjattan told the residents, saying that it is for the foregoing reasons that they should want to see progress continue.

Already, several communities in Linden have benefited from infrastructural upgrades within the last four years, among them Canvas City, Blue Berry Hill, and Silver Town.
But for this progress to continue, he told Lindeners they will have to choose between the credible and competent or the fraudulent and counterfeit.

His administration, he boasted, despite encountering so many challenges during its tenure, has accomplished so many things, and therefore should be judged on those accomplishments. “Because of those accomplishments,” the minister said, “we cannot stop the progress. So much we have done in every sphere of activity. In health, so much was spent and spent in Linden too. On security, brand new station at Linden, so many things in relation to infrastructural works… Brothers and sisters, when we compare as against what accomplishments there were in the 23 years, it is like chalk to cheese… Brothers and sisters, I just want you to not stop the progress that we have started in 2015.”

SEED OF NATIONAL UNITY
It is his party'(AFC)’s marriage to Granger’s party (APNU), with the signing of the Cummingsburg Accord that sowed the seed of national unity. Coalition politics, he said, is here to stay, and in 2015 brought an end to authoritative leadership. “We can have all the oil monies we want; we can have all the revenues from bauxite and gold and rice and sugar, but we can end up not living in a country, unless we have national unity.

And after some four-and-a-half years under the Cummingsburg Accord with coalition politics, I have seen how this thing is working so positively brothers and sisters,” Ramjattan posited, adding, “Unity must be given a chance at least; coalition politics is here to stay brothers and sisters.”

Like Guyanese cricketers who played in the West Indian Cricket Team, the PM candidate urged Lindeners on March 2 to continue batting and fielding for national unity by voting APNU-AFC.