VICE President Dr. Bharrat Jagdeo on Wednesday reiterated the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) government’s commitment to working along with the vendors of the Plaisance ‘Line Top’ to find a practical, accommodating solution as the government proceeds with road expansion works along the Railway Embankment.
Dr. Jagdeo, who met with the residents at a community meeting on Tuesday, chided the main political opposition A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) for using the situation to gain political mileage rather than deal with the concerns of the citizens.
“The government plans to ensure that we will accommodate them; we will try as far as possible to ensure that they can ply their livelihood,” Dr. Jagdeo reassured during a press engagement at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre (ACCC).
“We are going to continue to help all of those vendors. We have to find a way to ensure they are accommodated. We sent back a team today to meet with the vendors.”
The Vice President emphasised that vendors should not have been issued letters without proper consultations with the vendors and residents of the community. This is particularly important because the road construction will not reach Plaisance for some time.
Earlier this week letters were issued by the Ministry of Public Works to vendors who are encroaching on the main thoroughfare to facilitate a Railway Embankment expansion project.
However, Dr. Jagdeo explained that there’s an approximately six months window during which the vendors can be consulted with and an amicable solution arrived at before construction reaches Plaisance, so letters should not have gone out to the vendors before consultation.
However, after Dr. Jagdeo was made aware of the letters, he went into the community on Tuesday and met with the vendors and residents to reassure them that necessary consultations will be held to come up with alternative arrangements.
He reminded, however, that the road expansion project was one that everyone knew about and is not an impromptu project brought up to affect the vendors.
“We didn’t keep this [Railway Embankment expansion] project a secret. For the past six months we have been saying we have awarded a contract to build a four-lane road on the Railway Embankment. It’s not a sudden thing. If you are building a four-lane road on the embankment, necessity means you will have people on the parapet, reserves that have to be removed. We didn’t hide it from the public; the public knew that. It’s just the manner in which it was done was a crude manner. We didn’t break any promise we made to residents in the area,” Dr. Jagdeo said.
This, he noted, is why the reaction by the political opposition was simply superfluous politicking and much ado about nothing.
“What bothers me most is that letters help to create the narrative that the opposition has been peddling in the LGE [Local Government Elections] that we plan to remove vendors in the city and other parts of the country. We fed them something on a platter for them to exploit the concerns of the people once again for their own narrow political agenda. We know they will seek any attempt to seek relevance for themselves and be disruptive of development. Our approach is working with the people,” Dr. Jagdeo said.
