FROM midnight on Thursday, Guyana crossed a symbolic bridge of its own, one that connects policy with tangible daily savings for thousands of ordinary citizens.
With the removal of tolls on the Demerara Harbour Bridge, Berbice River Bridge and Mackenzie-Wismar Bridge, commuters stand to collectively save close to $12 million every single day, money that would otherwise be siphoned off in toll fees.
This decision, first pledged by President Irfaan Ali last year and reaffirmed in his March address at Babu John, is nothing short of transformational.
At a time when global economic conditions continue to cause cost-of-living pressures, especially at the household level, these savings are real and immediate.
For the Berbice River Bridge alone, commuters are now spared over $3.5 billion annually, a staggering figure that underscores how even seemingly small daily fees accumulate into substantial burdens on working families.
The Demerara Harbour Bridge, the nation’s busiest, saw an average daily traffic of 22,000 vehicles in 2023.
For every driver, the $200 toll may have felt negligible in isolation, but the collective daily saving speaks volumes about the impact when government policy directly removes costs from people’s pockets.
But toll removal is not just a gift, it is a down payment on Guyana’s promise of equitable development.
With major projects such as the new four-lane Demerara River Bridge and the new Wismar-Mackenzie Bridge underway, citizens can see for themselves that this administration is not content with simply removing fees, it is also expanding and modernising the country’s transport arteries, spurring inter-regional trade and easing congestion.
However, while the bridges may be toll-free, the reality for commuters is less simple. Hire car operators on the New Amsterdam–Georgetown route must pass on the benefit to passengers.
Now, the task is on transport operators to act responsibly. If public transport costs remain artificially inflated while major operational costs vanish overnight, then the spirit of this progressive policy is being betrayed.
It is also a call for regulatory bodies to step up. The local transport associations must ensure that commuters are not held hostage to opportunistic fare hikes disguised as “market adjustments.”
After all, fairness cannot be seasonal either, as President Ali reminded us, it must be rooted in daily practice, not opportunistic convenience.
The removal of tolls is a landmark moment. It must be matched by fairness in the transport sector so that every dollar saved at the bridge is a dollar that stays in the pockets of the people, not siphoned off by profit-driven fare gouging.
For now, Guyana has shown that good governance can remove burdens overnight.