Govt looking at designs to extend Ogle-to-Eccles Road to Diamond

– as bypass road set for completion in 1st quarter

With works nearing completion on the highly anticipated bypass road project that will link the East Coast Demerara (ECD) corridor at Ogle to the East Bank Demerara (EBD) at Eccles, the Guyana Government is now focusing on extending that road link to Diamond on the EBD corridor.
This is according to Public Works Minister Juan Edghill at his Ministry’s end-of-year press conference on Saturday. “We’re continuing the project of moving the East Coast-East Bank interlink road… We’re now moving past Eccles to get all the way up to Diamond. We’re looking at all of the designs,” Edghill told reporters.
However, the Head of the Works Services Group (WSG) at the Public Works Ministry, Ron Rahaman, reported during last weekend’s press conference that the 7.8 kilometres (km) of four-lane highway from Ogle to Eccles is near completion.
The two-year project, which commenced in June 2022, was initially scheduled to be completed by January 24, 2025, but has been extended by a few weeks. “The project is about 92.5 per cent completed and the project will be completed in the first quarter of 2025,” Rahaman stated.

The Ogle to Eccles bypass road, which is being built by India-based Ashoka Buildcon Limited to the tune of US$106.4 million, will run through the swampy backlands to create a direct highway connecting the East Coast with the East Bank corridor.
Only on December 31, Minister Edghill conducted a site visit to inspect the progress of the works.
At the time, it was reported that some 3.7 km of asphalt paving had been completed, accounting for 20 per cent of the paving work to be done. The remaining 80 per cent is scheduled to be completed by the project completion date.
The contractor of Ashoka Buildcon Limited, Ramachandar Rao, had assured of the readiness of the company to complete the remaining works in the shortest time possible.
“We have mobilised all of the remaining material to complete the remaining work in the shortest time,” he noted during last week’s visit.
Final works also include the removal of utility lines in the paths of the project, according to the Ministry.
The four-lane highway is being built from the intersection of the Ogle Airstrip Road and the Rupert Craig Highway on the ECD towards Haags Bosch in Eccles, on the EBD. It will feature a roundabout that will connect the highway and the Railway Embankment, which is also being expanded.

Back in 2015, the Indian Government provided a US$50 million credit line for the road link that was initially slated for Ogle to Diamond, EBD. However, the project cost was driven up to over $208 million by the previous A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) Government and the project languished under them.
However, when the current People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Administration took office in 2020, it redesigned the project into two phases to fit the LOC – first from Ogle to Haags Bosch road in Eccles, which is about 48-50 per cent of the project, and then from Eccles to Diamond.
The Guyana Government will be undertaking the extension from Diamond all the way to Timehri where the country’s main port of entry – the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA), is located.
This project will see the construction of some 7.8 km of road from the East Coast to the East Bank with each of the four lanes being 3.6 metres wide. The Highway will also feature a median in the middle and sidewalks as well as several connector roads, especially at the East Bank end to allow for further diversion of traffic.
It is anticipated that this new bypass road will reduce travel time as well as traffic congestion in Georgetown as well as along both the East Bank and East Coast corridors, providing alternate links to the Eugene F. Correia International Airport at Ogle and the CJIA at Timehri, EBD.
“This is a major intervention that will cause people moving between the East Bank and the East Coast to bypass the entire Georgetown traffic, reduce travel time, make people’s lives much easier, great accessibility, all the things that go with our improvement that have been started. It’s just a matter of implementing it now… And you would have noticed as well that the connector road at Haags Bosch which is in the Eccles area we were connecting with two lanes but we have since expanded that project to four lanes because of the volume of traffic that we are noticing, so that’s a significant improvement,” Minister Edghill had stated last August. (G-3)