Latest update April 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Apr 23, 2018 Letters
Dear Editor,
Incessant noise nuisance from Mon Repos North, a neighbouring village, flooding of yards and street when it rains, poor telephone service, or pile driving-collapsing homes, more? Yes! A semi-circle road way, Dasrat Street, measuring some 600 metres, is now known as The Bush Trail running through a coastal village of Triumph Front Lands, and under the duty of the BV/Triumph Neighbourhood Democratic Council (NDC).
Access to the Bush Trail is through two points from a (BV/Triumph) main road, running perpendicular to it, all akin to a protractor shape, the latter under the responsibility of the Region Four Regional Democratic Council (RDC).
With a seemingly complicit and hopeless NDC not to be outdone, the RDC last week took the prize for relegating citizens to this community to animals by paving a part of the Bush Trail, and earlier paving part of BV/Triumph Main Road, leaving disjointed sections impassable at times, reminiscent of the Kurupukari to Lethem trail when it rains.
Back in 2011, prior to national elections as is customary, the NDC apparently tried to deal with this 600 metres of Bush Trail by solidly paving ¼ of it, while the remaining ¾ was done using chip seal technology that promptly returned it to its glorious Bush Trail status within six months.
Not to be left behind, the Region 4 RDC in late 2014, prior to national elections, began work on its BV/Triumph main road. Something went wrong (as usual), and another trail was established.
Having tried and failed to fix its own road (BV/Triumph) main road prior to the 2015 elections, the Region 4 RDC in late 2016 made its grand entrance again by supremely paving ¾ of the their road but only as far as the entrance to its regional staff compound, which houses its entire team of SIX (6) staffers including the Regional Engineer who perhaps drive heavy duty trucks to work.
How different is this Regional Administration from the colonial masters who lived it up in the Guysuco estate compounds? The remaining ¼ section, which connects to the Bush Trail at the other end remains undone and what villagers and factory owners thought would have been a lifesaver, turned out to be more mud and slush.
This unfinished ¼ also continues to hinder access to the longest barely surviving Marvex (Bleach) factory at the BV Industrial Site, and has restrained the new Gafoors Complex the option of building its added entrance. It was too much for the RDC to think of ancillary benefits.
And if you think we are done, the best is yet to come! Arise the East Coast Public Road project in 2017. The Chinese contractor decided to use the recently part completed BV/Triumph main road to drive 20-plus ton trucks to access lands directly adjacent to the seawall to dump unusable material dug from the road area.
So up comes the Region 4 RDC who now decides that it will facilitate such access by building a new wooden access bridge connecting the very BV/Triumph main ‘road’ and the incomplete ¼ track to a Seawall Trail. The Chinese were now carrying out Central government’s mandate and so are more important than measly residents and factory owners needing a basic road.
When the bridge was completed, the Chinese contractors discovered the bridge clearly could not accommodate its huge trucks, so they added another bridge atop of the RDC’s bridge! You read correctly, atop!
The Chinese trucks made a mess of both the ¾ completed road and the ¼ incomplete track. The poor Marvex factory and residents were forced to detour using the entire section of the Bush Trail due to the mess and damage. Few persons ventured to the seawall for Easter due to the decrepit state of the road.
The story continues! Last week, the Region 4 RDC ‘magnanimously’ decided to turn attention to our Bush Trail! Hip Hip! It began laying a first class road but only to our utter amazement for 1/3 of the Bush Trail (about 225 metres), which when it reached the Pearly Gates of the RDC’s back entrance the road stopped. But consideration was then given to stretch it another 10 metres to cover the detour for a Muslin burial ground (the dead being more important than the living).
The RDC then on top of that added a further 10 metres to reach the entrance of a now so-called prominent villager, for this King to drive his chariot through. He is the Chairman of the Board for two controversial entities, BV Police Station and Hope Estate, and was granted several acres of land in Triumph Front Lands by a still surviving former Prime Minister in 1991 on the premise these lands were for charitable community purposes, but are now being sold commercially.
It would be worth noting this paved 1/3 of road, save for one crater, was always in far better condition than the now remaining 2/3 Bush Trail. You may recall, this remaining Bush Trail was also the subject of 100 foot piles dragged through it for pile driving last year!
It would be dastardly to think this latest 1/3 section of road was done because it runs through a small area which was a former PNC housing scheme back in the mid-1970s, while the Bush Trail passes through an area developed by a private entrepreneur in the late 1970s!
Mind you, residents worked like donkeys for years filling potholes with any available material, despite being ratepayers, and nationally, taxpayers. Even today, a tourist residing in the community is filling his builder’s waste into the craters on the Bush Trail.
To sum up, we now have two sections of Bush Trails neatly separating the first class roads. Progress never ceases in this part of the world! I guess the trick here is to bring Eco-tourism like Hinterland conditions to the coast, where access is cheaper!
M.L.
Please share this to every Guyanese including your house cats.
Apr 19, 2024
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