Your Eyewitness likes to amble through neighbourhoods in his dear, ole Mudland. Of course, with our villages stretched across more than 200 miles of coastland, his ambling has to be done vehicularly, thank you!! But what he can report, Dear Reader, is that in two years, any one visitor from foreign who’s been away for a while won’t be able to recognise even the street they grew up in!! That’s how fast (and furious) the changes wrought by the new PPP Administration are kicking in at the grassroots!!
The said Government just signed $56.8B contracts for infrastructure to fulfil their commitments to distribute 50,000 house lots by 2025! What this means is that in addition to completely new housing areas being opened up like Silica City on the Linden Highway, almost every existing housing scheme is being doubled or tripled in size!! Take villages that were part of the historic movement of labourers out of the logies – directed by the colonial government to the sugar industry back in the 1950s – trying to address the criticisms of Cheddi and the PPP.
Within a decade, 125,000 houses had been built along the Public Road bordering the Atlantic – in what was to be the largest resettlement in the British Caribbean!! But what’s unfolding now will see each of those villages extended deep into the coast – utilising lands on which sugar cane once flourished!! So for instance at Leonora – from where the President hails, incidentally – part of that $56 billion will double this venerable settlement where the factory had been shuttered as far back as the 1970s! Some felt Burnham had done that because Leonora had been one of the most resolute villages opposing his dictatorship!!
Some of these old housing schemes had already exploded in size – like Parfaite Harmonie across the Demerara Harbour Bridge that had merely been an adjunct to the sleepy strip called Plantation La Grange!! Now we’ll see Palmyra – the rustic setting for Mittelholzer’s “Corentyne’s Thunder” – exploding into a city after the planned development already begun across from the Berbice Bridge!! And so on and so forth.
But that’s not the only change stumbled upon by your enterprising Eyewitness. Nah!! Even more transformative is the makeover of present settlements – signalled by mounds of sand and stones blocking almost every street in the settled, sleepy villages. These old 20×20 wooden structures are being replaced by huge, concrete, Florida-style houses that completely fill the old, 50×90 house lots!! You wouldn’t believe the latest development unearthed by your Eyewitness – guest houses in these old housing schemes!!
Seems so many relatives are coming from foreign they overwhelm their hosts accustomed to providing our famed Guyanese hospitality!! Hence the guest houses!!
It’s gonna be a bright, bright sunshiny future!!
…at Telecoms provider?
While your Eyewitness is as excited as the next man about our booming, frontier-type development, we gotta be aware of risks in this go-go world. Take the excitement occasioned by the PPP’s early liberalisation of the communications sector by removing GTT’s monopoly. That opened up the competition – and competition’s good, right?? Well, yes and no!! It’s good for us consumers who get cheaper services but what about the companies that now have to shell out billions trying to secure a technological edge to compete in the new market??
Well, that’s the heart of the capitalist development path – which carries well-recognised risks. Take, for instance, one of our companies, Digicel plunged in to take advantage of the new opportunities.
Globally, they’ve ended up with US$4.55 billion of bonds and corporate loans – all dunned “junk” – due to mature by the end of 2025.
Right now, they’ve asked their bondholders to defer cashing in US$925 for 30 days. It’s gonna take a miracle for them to avoid a haircut!!
…in vanishing?
Billionaire Chinese venture capitalist Bao Fan had been reported “missing” by his firms. Now we hear he’s “cooperating with the authorities” – a euphemism for “grilling”.
So what made one of our high-rankers “missing” for four months??
