PRESIDENT Bharrat Jagdeo said that he sees a huge future for the Berbice area, and that there will be major developments taking place there.
He was delivering the feature address last Friday, at the commissioning of the new $400M Cotton Tree Water Treatment Plant in Region Five (Mahaica/Berbice), which will benefit over 15,000 residents. He said: “It is wonderful that so many people, 15,000 people will benefit from treated water but in a country like ours where people’s expectations are high, the policymakers have to be impatient, we all have to be impatient.”
“We cannot just sit and admire our handiwork, and this has been wonderful handiwork here. We need to look to the next project and the next project and a hundred more projects that would bring a better life to all of our people,” he urged.
He said too often people sit and admire their handiwork.
“I want the same enthusiasm that is shared at the level of my Cabinet to be shared across this country, and it is that enthusiasm that would drive us the government to focus more on investments that are supportive of a better quality of life, it is the enthusiasm if developed that would drive the private sector to invest more and to create more jobs so that more of our people would be employed,” he stressed.
He said it is the enthusiasm that will drive people at their private level, at the level of the family.
“A country that has that drive, that recognizes that their lives depend on their own efforts and how hard they work – is a country that makes progress,” he maintained.
He said if everyone or every sector in the country develops that approach, then the negatives that are so often reflected in sections of the communities, will not affect us.
“Because we will be firmly fixed on our future, a better future for us all,” President Jagdeo said.
“I have made it clear that that future has to encompass everyone equally, all of our peoples must benefit from this, and at the level of the State we ensure that this happens scrupulously,” he assured.
“In Berbice, I see a huge future,” he said noting that right now, several discussions are ongoing about activities.
He said this include a deep water opening up with a road from Brazil being connected to the harbour; CGX will spend about US$10M building a wharf there which will have its own turning basin which will create jobs in these communities.
“We plan with the new fibre optic linkages coming in through Trinidad and Brazil and with a fibre optic backbone running from Essequibo all the way to the Corentyne which we plan to put in place, tens of thousands of jobs can move to these communities as is already demonstrated by some of the call centres aggressive plans for expansion because the cost of bandwidth, the cost of Information Communication Technology services will go down,” he said.
He said, for example, one such company plans to move from 1200 employees to 4,200 employees by the end of next year, because of the two new fibre optic cables.
“We need to find out much more about these and ensure that in these communities the kids are prepared for that kind of service, that they are trained,” he said.
“We might traditionally be doing rice or sugar but many of the young people may not want that future, and therefore we have to prepare them for this changing future, the future that will probably be dominated by technology and technology related jobs and services that offer a chance of higher pay and getting out of poverty and greater prosperity,” he explained.
He said they have to start thinking that way too, and it can’t be just that the Government wants this, “people have to want this and start making the training”.
“With the bridge across the Berbice River, we have seen a change in the dynamism,” he noted, and that no longer the over 100,000 person living across there, are isolated from the rest of the country since “territorial integration means a lot for development”.
He said with that bridge, many companies that were reluctant to set up facilities across the river because of the horrible services at the ferry stelling, now are looking to Berbice as a very attractive destination for investments and with investments come jobs.
“The sugar industry which is a major employer right across these areas, we have been struggling in spite of the cuts by 36 per cent in the prices to keep the industry alive and we hope by next year if all goes well and we have a good working relationship with the union, we will get up to maybe 350,000 tonnes of sugar,” he expressed.
He said if this is done, the unit cost will come down and then “we will survive and we will do well and make money in spite of 36 per cent cuts in the price from the European Union.”
“I am convinced we can do it. We did not choose the route that many other countries did, scrap sugar. Had we scrap sugar the entire Berbice area including this area would have been in doldrums,” he said.
He reminded that it is the largest employer of people, and the largest money circulating activity in that part of the country, and insisted that the Government has made a dedicated approach.
He said this year, they bought some land from the Guyana Sugar Corporation to develop into 10,000 house lots for low income people, but that injected some $5.4B into the company.
He said this money would be used to achieve the turnaround to deal with the consequences of the price cut and to ensure that they have a viable industry.
He said, “And we do this right across the country, it is not only for sugar.
Adding, “So many people who deliberately say we do this for sugar because sugar workers are more supportive of the government and we don’t do it for other communities, they should look at the experience of Kwakwani, Ituni and Linden and the billions of dollars that we pump into those economies because they need the assistance.”
“The only thing that guides us is not by people voting pattern but by the needs of our people and that will continue to guide us,” he reaffirmed.
“So you may have an entire development plan for the country but Berbice has its own peculiarities, and you are going to see a buzz in this area,” he maintained.
“The area that you live here in ten years time, it would be transformed – totally transformed, this would probably become the busiest part of the country,” he said.
The President said if all goes well, the two oil companies would spend over a US$120M this year exploring for oil.
“This will be a base here, if we find oil that will even make it much better. We can do it probably in five years not ten years, transform this entire region, so you are going to see major, major developments here,” he stated.