This week the Pepperpot Magazine visited the bustling village of Rosignol, West Coast Berbice, a central hub for many businesses and a market.

ROSIGNOL is the last village before the Berbice River Bridge, and it is a vast community which is divided into two sections, A and B.

The population of the village is more than 10,000 and it also has a squatting area section which is thickly populated and has a lot of children.

The main economic activities of the people are cash crops farming, rice farming, poultry farming, livestock and cattle farming.

There are sugar workers attached to the Blairmont Sugar Estate, vendors, business owners, public servants and ordinary folk who have a variety of skills, earning an honest dollar by doing many jobs.

Rosignol Village has two large fishing complexes which employ dozens of villagers and it is a central point of shopping that has two markets, one at Stelling Road and the other on the roadside, on the access road itself.

Rosignol has commercial banks, supermarkets, malls, shops, stalls, groceries, bars, barbershops, salons, boutiques, stationery and printing businesses and a wide variety of services.

Rosignol Village is between the D’Edward and Blairmont communities.

There are about 1,100 houses in Rosignol, and it varies from large houses to modest, cottage-style wooden houses in all shapes, sizes and colours.

The Stelling Road Market is held there only on Saturdays and since the closure of the ferry service, a lot of small businesses have relocated to central Rosignol, while others went out of business.

The village also has two lumberyards and all essentials can be purchased within the community and there is no need to journey to the city to shop, except for certain hard to get things.

Rosignol has two health centres, two primary schools, one ‘A’-List Secondary School and three nursery schools.

The village also has mandirs, mosques and churches.

The locals are very friendly and welcoming. They consist of both East Indians and Afro-Guyanese, who reside side by side, and the people are generally neighbourly.

Community highlights
The village is maintained under the Zeelust/Rosignol Neighbourhood Democratic Council (NDC).

The Chairman is Chaitram Puran, who has held the post for the past three years and is from the neighbouring village of D’Edward.

He told the Pepperpot Magazine that the NDC covers seven villages and the community of Rosignol is quite large in terms of land space and is a central point of businesses, making it a busy shopping area.

Puran revealed that 60 percent of the vendors sell on the roadside at Rosignol and the land space on which they operate is not under the NDC, so it is not regularised for a tarmac, but the vendors have since formed a committee.

The chairman added that Rosignol is a peaceful place and it is not a high-crime area, even though they have had incidents of break-ins and thefts.

He disclosed that there is a squatter settlement within Rosignol and it is a low-lying area, which was recently flooded due to heavy and continuous rainfall.

Puran explained that it was once farmlands that slowly developed into a squatting area that consists of Train Line and Bennett Streets.

NDC input
Meanwhile, giving developmental highlights of works undertaken by the NDC, Puran stated that they have upgraded some internal streets within the village with crush and run.

He related that due to the size of the village, they have more than 20 internal streets and some are in need of upgrading to fill potholes.

Puran stated that they have repaired five bridges in the community, which consists of two constituencies and extends from east to west.

The chairman reported that due to the flooding, they borrowed machinery from NDIA and undertook drainage works in the village to mitigate widespread flooding.

Puran disclosed that they have 18 Community Infrastructure Improvement Project (CIIP) employees from the community and they have been actively maintaining drains and parapets in the village.

He related that recently the Community Development Council (CDC) from Cotton Tree is on board with the Rosignol NDC, and collectively they will lend support in terms of developmental projects in the communities.