I take great pleasure in addressing a major issue that has been avoided and paid no attention to and as a result made some people punish for years because the local government located in this area of No.52 – 74 refuses to make an access road located beside a resort and also it is considered a safe entrance and exit to the beach since there is a police impact base located near the head of the street. It is located at the midpoint of the beach and is supposed to be an access road to the Sunsplash resort beside it and should be built by local government in order to boost this tourism resort and it is commonly known by the public as No.62 Street (dam).
The people have left a well established life in a developed country, Canada, and chose to live their life in Guyana by becoming re-migrants and also private sector investors by owning the only resort located on Guyana’s No.63 beach, one of the best tourism destinations in the Caribbean and came back to introduce tourism to Berbice and Guyana since this resort was one of the first established in the country since 1996.
The couple came as a family with their two daughters, one went away because she didn’t like the way of life here and the way she was being treated by the public, that is, no respect from people who kept asking her personal questions why she really came here and when is she going back. So she left not feeling comfortable as a contributor towards Guyana but as an alien, not supposing to be here. The other one attends the University of Guyana and it has been real hectic for her since she has to travel home from evening lessons by driving her car home all the way around from the beach to the resort where it is spooky and lonely in the dark nights. Also, when the tide is up this young woman has to wait an hour or more on the road until the tide recedes so she can finally go home from a long tiresome day of study, classes and feeling rather hungry and sticky in the clothes she left on for school the whole day.
Everyone says in soft careless whispers that this family really has guts to live where they are actually living on the beach with no kind of assistance at all. They did every little thing on their own by using natural resources as a way to get electricity and conserving the public use of getting water since they were connected and paying regularly for the water but squatters in the area and stray cattle kept on breaking their pipelines (185 times) and now are using rain water instead which is a great idea but they say its hard to use sometimes when there is a drought or when it does not rain that frequently.
When the tide is up everyone suffers on the beach as I can see that is absolutely true. It seems as if no one cares for these people since they were pioneers in the tourism sector and should be applauded for what they have done for the area but instead are being boycotted by the public and envied by particular persons working in the local government sector.
Speaking to the Overseer in this area of 52 – 74 Neighborhood Democratic Council (NDC) it’s like talking to a tree. What most people cannot believe is that foreigners are coming to invest in the country but are not being welcomed, treated fairly and being ignored and envied for their accomplishments which the public enjoy the benefits of.
The overseer has been contacted by this prominent couple on several occasions and also myself about this vital street that needs to be made as a “Sweet Escape” to the beach because when the tide is up people will not get stuck on the beach and have to wait for hours for the high seasonal tides to retrieve and also it is located at the midpoint of the beach, the most popular part besides the Sunsplash resort where people hang out in front on the beach.
I am aware that there already exists two passage ways to the beach that is the 63 beach entrance road that needs to be made more properly to attract tourists and also make it an all purpose durable road to serve for heavy duty vehicles using this road but it is not considered safe because it is cluttered with two schools, a Ministry of Education Department and a cattle pound, a water users association building, a rum shop and a lot of little children running about everywhere. The other road located on the beach is the No.60 road which is a very long distance from the beach and desolate and not safe for people to use since it has large bushes on both sides of the street on half of its length and the tide comes up more faster, higher and stays up more longer that end than the rest of the beach which means the public hardly ever uses it only suspicious people who want to hide from the public for various reasons. So these overseas investors contributed millions towards society and now some are saying that these people should not get a bit of help from the public by making the street besides them? That would be boosting tourism and embracing overseas investors who contributed a lot if you do something small at least for them. Another main point of this story is that I personally wrote a letter to the chairman of Region Six and never got a reply from him nor a good response since I met him at his office concerning this same street. I wrote him before the budget in January 2009 and expected it to be made but to no avail. Nothing has happened and I believe he is avoiding me and the resort owners.
I also dropped a letter at the Local Government Ministry in Georgetown and never got a reply. The main objective also of this story is that the same resort owners made the entire street once when they first came to live and if the people’s business is not running on a large scale, they are not getting the support from the public and that means the business is not doing well and they have been living off their own savings for ten years now. Where are they going to get money from to build the street again for everyone to use whereas the NDC is supposed to do that since it is a public street and not a privately owned one.
I think this is enough of taking advantage of the resort owners and people around who frequent the beach and need the access road in order to commute inwardly and outwardly of 63 beach. This main and ongoing issue needs to be addressed and solved immediately and I cannot see why the local government or the Neighborhood Democratic Council of 52 – 74 or the Region is making all the streets around and leaving this main access road to the beach abandoned with huge potholes, ditches, and large bushes overgrowing and covering it. We need to open our eyes today and take care of matters of interest that need to be focused on, corrected and not pushed away.
We can make a difference today if certain people working in the local government sector can change their habits. The job of local governments is to build the streets that we need to use. We pay our taxes to upkeep the surroundings around us. Some squatters who live on the resort owners estate are living on this land for free while these people pay property tax for their own land that squatters are living on and enjoying and the funny part about this situation or a predicament I should call it is that the first cross street you meet from the road side, where they are squatting behind was made by the NDC and who knows its not their land and up keeping peoples streets who are not paying property taxes. What a dim-witted thing to do?
Development such as building roads in a country are good by making the country look progressive and visitors’ perspective about the country would envisage Guyana as being a rapidly growing economic country. Beside the 63 beach Sunsplash resort, the 62 Access road needs to be made as a midpoint passageway to and from the beach to solve the problem of pu
zzled people left on the beach to punish until the tide recedes and also in many developed countries, governments make access roads beside resorts to promote the potential of investments.
There was a time when the public was walking in the resort owners property and they had to call Mr. Clinton Collymore, who was the Minister of Local Government at that time to demarcate and divide the land with a surveyor and NDC workmen and machinery in order to separate their private estate from the public street. That happened sometime in 2002.
I am calling on Mr. Clinton Collymore from the Local Government to respond to this ongoing issue of this street since I believe this is a high time to repair this vital street and make it durable so it can last generations to come like the others existing in the area.
He seems to be the only person who would pay attention to this ongoing issue of the No.62 access road, located at the midpoint of the popular 63 beach besides the Sunsplash Resort.