…Jordan urges Police Officers
A little over a week after the West Coast Demerara (WCD) highway was officially opened to the public, Finance Minister Winston Jordan has expressed his concerns over the way the roadway is being utilised by commuters.
During a visit to Region Three (Essequibo Islands-West Demerara) on Saturday, the Finance Minister stated that he was not pleased at what he saw along the highway. According to him, many vehicles were parked haphazardly along the roadway and vendors were operating along the shoulders of the roadway.
“I believe it’s utter lawlessness in terms to have a market where people are parked all over the place. No one should be denied a living, but we must do our living within the laws of the country. We should not, as law enforcers, turn a blind eye to law breaking. It starts from a small crime that you might want to overlook and then it balloons into some of the problems that we do have today,” Jordan said.
The Police were urged to perform their duties so as to ensure that all guidelines were adhered to, in order to preserve the highway. This includes ensuring that traffic hazards are not created when vendors ply their various trades.
“I was really not pleased with what I saw coming over here; and I’m asking the Police to do what is necessary; first of all, to do your job and then do also what is necessary, so that this highway can be preserved,” the Minister said.
“Parking on shoulders degrade highways very much. We ought not to allow parking on shoulders for highways, and we certainly ought not to allow people to be selling on highways, thus creating traffic hazards, congestion, and all these things,” he added.
He further stated that for such structures to last, citizens and visitors would have to ensure that they were cared for and used the correct way.
“This is easily the newest of the three coming from across the bridge (the Demerara Harbour Bridge). I’m already concerned that we seem to be ‘new people’. We seem to commission new things and then we move on to the next, not seeming to care that if we don’t care what we put in place, it would not service for the time that it is supposed to service.”
The 30.7 kilometre highway spans from Vreed-en-Hoop to Hydronie, and was commissioned as part of a road improvement project, which was ongoing for approximately 40 months.
The project, budgeted at US$46.7 million, which was signed under the previous Administration in 2014, was the fourth of its kind funded by the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), in collaboration with the Government. It comprised road works along the main access road on the WCD.
