Region 10 Council moves to rehabilitate burnt-out Wismar Post Office

Almost two weeks after fire was set to the inside of the Wismar Post Office at Linden, Region 10 (Upper Demerara- Berbice) during an attempted robbery, the Regional Democratic Council (RDC) has moved to undertake rehabilitation works to the building.
Regional officials arrived at this decision in an effort to bring relief to hundreds of pensioners who have since been affected by the closure of the Post Office. According to Regional Chairman Renis Morian, he received a bill of quantities on Monday which placed the cost of rehabilitation at $14 million, and he will now move to secure emergency funding to push the process forward, since he does not want pensioners who reside at Wismar to incur additional costs to travel to the Mackenzie Post Office to uplift their payments.
“While we’re in the mood of budget for 2019, we don’t expect that this thing will wait until 2019. The Post Office serves the people that come from the Wismar

The Wismar Post Office

shore, hundreds of pensioners turn up there. So, I am sending (copies of) this priced bill of quantities to the Chairman of the GPO (Guyana Post Office) Board; to the Chief Executive Officer, (Ministry) of Finance; also to the Honourable Minister Bulkan and the Minister of State, Honourable Joseph Harmon, with a view that emergency funds will be appropriated that we could move assiduously to get this work done,” he noted.
Morian commended engineers of the RDC for producing the document in a timely manner. The interior of the Post Office was torched in the wee hours of August 2, 2018 after bandits forced their way into the building but encountered difficulty in accessing monies from a safe which contained payments for the old age pension. The safe withstood the bandits’ attempts at broaching it, and it is believed that the bandits then set the building alight after their attempt had failed.
Since the incident, pensioners have been forced to access the service at the Mackenzie Post Office. Although an investigation has been launched, there has been no arrest.
The incident has since led to calls by Lindeners for security to be installed at the Post Office. The entity has been hit by bandits several times in the past.