Attention needed at Kwakwani river crossing

Dear Editor,
For effective, truly equitable and sustainable development, there is a need for the PPP/C Government to place special attention on the Kwakwani river crossing in the Berbice River. The barge service provided an important lifeline for transportation crossing over the Berbice River for many years, transferring goods to many small communities in Kwakwani.
Floodwaters and unreliable service in recent months have some residents worried about the future of the service they now receive. The barge services this season is the worse residents have seen in recent years. The owners operate whenever they feel like, and hold the community to ransom at every level of operation. It has reached a point where the fuel truck has to spend long hours – even a day – before crossing to Kwakwani to deliver needed essential fuel for the Power Plant.
The barge service has been a lifeline to many people who live and work in the western and eastern territories of Kwakwani, but within recent months, with residents’ goods being left on the other side due to the delayed or missed barge, and passengers and even visitors sleeping in their cars on the western side with no information on when they would be allowed to cross, the situation has become alarming, and the community leader has been left in doubt about the reliability of the river barge system.
It’s like being a kid at a candy store. Once they get the candy, they don’t care about anything else around them. Kwakwani residents face challenges due to their remoteness, lack of direct access to their communities, significant distance from the central market place, lack of any direct link to anywhere.
It is time to have that conversation about a bridge linking the western side to Central Kwakwani, which would bring sustainable economic development to Kwakwani and contiguous communities.
A bridge provides connections for communities to access the services they need safely and conveniently. Unfortunately, a bridge and other infrastructure are nonexistent in Kwakwani. The
PPP/C Government is all about building connections to development. Residents of Kwakwani must have safe and easy access to critical external resources like healthcare, education or employment, which are hampered by the mighty Berbice river. With a single innovation, a bridge can have an impact on households across multiple dimensions.
Rural communities surrounded by bodies of water are required to find alternate methods across those bodies of water if no bridge exists. heavy rainfall and floods can create such dangerous conditions that people can’t cross safely. The lack of a bridge means residents are either stranded, without access to necessary resources, or are faced with the risk of a potentially life-threatening crossing.
Structurally sound bridges provide developing communities with safe and direct access points throughout the year.
Bridges are a critical component of a nation’s infrastructure.
It can have a powerful impact when an area that has a large money supply is connected to one that has goods or services to sell, or people who need work. The same is true when a community that has raw materials gains easy access to another that has factories that are able to convert them into usable goods.

Sincerely,
David Adams