Dear Editor,
After the rain finished falling on Friday, June 6, I decided to drive my car on the newly built Cotton Field street leading to the Anna Regina Multilateral School which was done by a contractor last week. I was surprised to see that the whole street was riddled with potholes after the sand had been washed off from the road surface.
This street is being constructed in front of my house leading to the Multilateral School, a Region Two project that no doubt cost some millions of dollars. From all appearances, this is a colossal waste of taxpayers’ money. This street is being constructed with substandard materials – tar, sand and stones – and when the rain falls all the materials are being washed away leaving the potholes exposed.
This street, which is some 200 rods long, has been graded down. This destroyed a rock solid surface structure to build a porous street. Looking at the lessons from previous regional projects, one would see that consultation with the beneficiaries of the project is a very important factor. In 1993, this said street had some substandard work done on it. I quickly wrote a letter to Dr Cheddi Jagan and he sent a technical road-building team to investigate my complaints. The team found that the mixture with the sand and loam was poor and there was no compaction; the contractor was then ordered to rebuild the entire street.
When a bad decision is made, a decision that costs millions of dollars and nothing is being done to reverse or to rectify it, then that is a sad state of affairs. Is this not what democracy and good governance are all about? We the residents and taxpayers will wait and see what penalty the regional administration will impose on this contractor.
There is no room for wasteful spending; it is time that we stop abusing the democracy that the people have entrusted us with. For progress to be made in the region, the desk attitude of most of the senior managers will certainly have to change. Over the years, the government has made massive investments in road-building. We must ensure that we get real benefit from our hard-earned taxpayer dollars.
Yours faithfully,
Mohamed Khan
