Lethem businesses would welcome any attempts by the authorities to upgrade the Linden/Lethem trail to an all-weather road, according to Chairman of the Rupununi Chamber of Commerce and Industry Alfred Ramsarran.
The Cork Wood area along the trail, located south of the Iwokrama Rainforest Centre, remains the main area along the road posing difficulties for motorists and repairs were still being undertaken to the damaged section yesterday.
Ramsarran told Stabroek News yesterday that the business community is looking forward to an all-weather road to connect the border community to the coastland. He said recent closures of sections of the road to vehicular traffic, especially the heavy vehicles, saw the area suffering a lot. He noted that in addition to traders in Lethem, surrounding communities and the coastland that use the road, a number of Brazilians also use it daily to trade in Guyana. Several businesspersons from the neighbouring Roraima state in Brazil, he further explained, have been conducting business via the Lethem trail recently. He said that the period to trade items into Brazil from China takes some 60 days by ship but it is reduced when the Lethem road is utilized. He added that the current cost to travel to and from Lethem by air lies in the vicinity of $56,000 and, according to him, this mode of transportation had been fully booked recently, with the domestic airlines operating between the Coastland and Lethem being overbooked for the next two weeks.
Ramsarran noted that with Lethem positioned as the central area connecting villages in the Rupununi, joint celebrations for this year’s Amerindian Heritage month activities in the region appear to hang in the balance because of bad conditions along the Lethem-Aishalton road.
The road had also been in an impassable state over the past several weeks, with persistent rainfall playing a major role in its condition. Residents from the communities usually travel to the central location to participate in cultural activities.
Regional Chairman Clarindo Lucas had told this newspaper recently that the regional administration would be looking at repairing the South Rupununi road when repairs would have been completed along the Linden/Lethem road. He stated that some 18 miles of works have been completed to the road, with the difficult parts being in the vicinity of Mountain Point.
There had been joint discussions in the past between the authorities here and the Brazilians on paving of the Lethem trail.
In March 2007, during the Rio Summit, President Bharrat Jagdeo and Brazil’s President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva had discussed setting up a joint technical team to assess the road from Lethem to Linden in preparation for paving it through a loan financed by Brazil.
