Government will be moving this week to initiate a number of projects with the signing of the contract for the Wismar Bridge, turning of the sod for the New Amsterdam Hospital, and advertising Requests for Proposals (RFP) for national gas projects, among them.
President Irfaan Ali yesterday afternoon made the announcements in his first public address to citizens for 2024.
“During the course of this week, already in the first week of the year, you will see some major projects being commissioned or signed into operation…,” he said in the televised address.
Ali said that before the end of the week, the contract for the construction of the new Wismar Bridge will be signed. “This is a tremendously important investment, a major public infrastructure investment for our country for Region 10. So during the course of this week, you will see us signing the contract for the new Wismar Bridge. Of course this will create tremendous op-portunities in the mining town.”
Last week Minister of Public Works, Juan Edghill, had announced that developmental works for the four-lane bridge across the Demerara River are slated to begin this year.
“Monies have been provided, and the contractor was identified, so we are ready to go,” he had said.
Stabroek News understands that the company contracted for the project is China Railway Construction Corporation, according to a project engineer at the Ministry of Public Works.
In 2020, an elevated precast concrete girder bridge equipped with two traffic lanes and a footpath was proposed to replace the existing Wismar Bridge, which has deteriorated since its completion in 1967. However, the design was amended to accommodate four lanes of traffic.
Meanwhile, the President informed that the process for collecting comments relating to the proposed National Gas Strategy has been completed and government will be “integrating those comments with the initial document.”
In another week, he said, they are expected to “go to Requests for proposal or RFP, to move towards implementing or move towards looking at models.”
“Requesting models through which we can move as quickly as possible to monetizing the total gas assets that we have in our country,” he added.
Yesterday, the President noted that government spent the time “discussing ways in which we can accelerate the implementation of our national programmes or the projects that we are on undertaking but more importantly, accelerating the people-centred development investments and policies that will see further advancement and improvement in the life and welfare of the people of our country.”
Another announcement by Ali was that government had finalised with the Lands and Surveys Department and the Ministry of Housing and Water, the coming into operation of 500 new lots on the Linden-Soesdyke Highway.
“Late last year I spoke about regularizing the [Linden] Highway [communities] and the creation of three formal housing community on the Linden-Soesdyke Highway so that we can address all the squatting on the highway,” he said.
“We have finalised the first course of action, which will see the infrastructure development that would lead to the creation of 500 new lots…. to take care of that squatter issues there,” he added.
During the course of the next two weeks also, there is a “major programme in which hundreds of new leases and land titles will be issued for different people, including those on Hill Foot at Linden/Soesdyke Highway,” Ali disclosed.
Credit was given to Minister within the Office of the Prime Minister Kwame McCoy for the regularisation and house lot allocations.
