THE West Coast Berbice street protest impacted medical supplies and created shortages of food and other essentials, Berbice Chamber of Commerce and Development Association President, Ryan Alexander reported on Friday.

Berbice is a hub for wholesale/retail trade and lots of products and services are moved from Georgetown to Berbice on any given day.

However, because of the blockages and disruptions along the West Coast Berbice thoroughfare, reserves in the region ran low and perishable products such as bread and dairy products could not have reached East Berbice.

“That market has been affected from a consumer perspective and a manufacturing and distribution perspective,’ Alexander told the Guyana Chronicle.

A joint meeting was recently held with the sister chambers of Region Six and at that forum the issue of the unrest was raised, as well as its impact on the region.

The Berbice Chamber of Commerce and Development Association is encouraged by efforts of the authorities to address the situation and is hoping that things will return to normalcy soon.

From Monday to Wednesday, newspaper vendors were unable to access dailies for resale, but resume doing so on Thursday. Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s editions were sold on Thursday.

Unofficial reports suggest that due to the protest, services at Scotia and Republic Bank branches in the region were affected.

Persons told the Guyana Chronicle that they visited the branches along Strand, New Amsterdam on Wednesday and Thursday and saw closed doors. The security officers were unable to say the reason for the closure.

Meanwhile, Regional Health Officer Dr Vishalya Sharma confirmed that there was a shortage of oxygen and blood supply in the region as a result of the West Berbice thoroughfare being blocked with derelict vehicles, buildings and trees before being set ablaze.

Most of the liquid gas and screened blood comes from Georgetown, which is about 60 miles away.

“There were some shortages… there were urgent needs…. we had to seek alternative ways to source the oxygen and blood as we could not put our drivers nor our vehicles at risk,” Dr Sharma said.

Critical patients had to be medevacked to Georgetown, since even emergency vehicles were blocked from traversing the affected roadways. The protests started following the discovery of the mutilated bodies of two teen cousins, Isaiah and Joel Henry of Number Four Village, in the Cotton Tree backlands, last Sunday afternoon