Transformative development is here, there, everywhere in Guyana

Transformative development is occurring at a dizzying pace everywhere in Guyana. Many of the transformative projects are human resource projects. These projects offer education and training that have the potential to change lives for young people and their families. For example, this week, President Irfaan Ali announced that through an agreement with the UAE, 150,000 Guyanese will be trained as coders.
Coders need less expertise than others, and are not as highly skilled as programmers. In a way, coders are the construction workers of the digital world. It is the coders who put together the building blocks to create websites, apps, or any other type of computer software.
Young Guyanese lives are being transformed daily in this country. With this programme alone, Guyana will become the epicentre of coding for Caricom. This is just one example of how the Irfaan Ali-led Government is changing lives in our country; transforming lives all across Guyana.
A second example is the announcement of a US$120M (G$24B) Technical Training College in Port Mourant, in collaboration with EXXON, to train technical workers for the OIL and GAS industry and other industries, and for the hospitality industry. The Institute will include modern facilities and dormitories for young people coming from all across Guyana to be trained. Together with the GOAL programme and the promise to make UG a free-of-charge university, young Guyanese are being given unimaginable opportunities to advance themselves and their families. Never has such an expansive vision for youth development been articulated in any country in Caricom before. For generations of young people in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, the opportunities for young Guyanese today are things those generations could not have imagined.

Outside of education and training opportunities for young people, significant infrastructural and industrial developments are already transforming Guyana. The invitation for expression of interest in the construction of a 30,000-barrel-a-day oil refinery, to be constructed on Crab Island, on the eastern bank of the Berbice River, is a major transformative project for our country. Guyana will be able to meet its own domestic need for refined oil. The largest importation bill will be eliminated for Guyana. Cost will also be reduced for gasoline and other refined oil products. Hundreds of technical and highly-paid jobs will be created.
The economy will be further stimulated with the refinery driving demand for other locally-produced items. Shore-based companies have already visibly transformed the Demerara River, on both banks. Even though it is early days, the transformation is already evident on the banks of the Demerara River. This same dramatic transformation is now going to happen on both banks of the Berbice River, bringing enormous opportunities for local communities in Regions 5 and 6. Already, a company has announced a shore-based business on the Berbice River. Together with a deep-water harbour at the mouth of the Berbice River, this will transform Crab Island, Regions 5 and 6, and Guyana as a whole.
The Berbice Highway from New Amsterdam to Moleson Creek is being transformed into a four-lane highway. With a new-promised high-span bridge similar to the new one being constructed over the Demerara River, the Berbice landscape will forever be transformed.
The four-lane highway will connect the Berbice River Bridge to the Corentyne River Bridge, a new bridge that will connect Guyana to Suriname.
At the same time as he was making these exciting announcements, President Ali was commissioning the 6.5km #58 Road, the first phase of a road that will shortly be expanded by 16km to the Canje River. Once a new bridge, the second one on the Canje River, is completed, the road will make its way to the Berbice River, connecting to Kwakwani. This means that, outside of a road connecting Brazil through Linden to the Berbice River Bridge and the deep-water harbour, the potential for a diversion through the #58 Road to the Corentyne River Bridge and to Suriname will create a link by road, and bridges between Guyana, Brazil and Suriname. Previous generations would have thought of this scenario only as fiction.
The #58 Road immediately makes available another 50,000 acres of agricultural land. But, as the road eventually reaches the Berbice River, more than 200,000 acres of new agricultural land, new housing and new industrial lands will become available. Even as the new possibilities arise, a new shopping centre and office complex are being constructed in Palmyra. A new international-standard stadium, capable of hosting ICC cricket such as World Cup cricket and CPL cricket, will be available. New hotels are slated to be constructed at this venue.
Not so long ago, Guyanese flocked into Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, other Caribbean islands, to America, Canada, the UK. We wanted to find some place, anyplace to go to escape the hopelessness of Guyana. Our people found new lives, comfort and succor in other people’s lands.
Look how far we have come as a country that, before our very eyes – not slowly, not gradually, but at a dizzying pace – our transformation is such that we already have a labour problem! Our country now is in desperate need of job-seekers. President Cheddi Jagan once cautioned that we must not modernise too rapidly into mechanisation to replace jobs. President Bharrat Jagdeo promised a modernised country wherein manual labour would be replaced by mechanisation and industrialisation. Many of our people thought it was a pipe dream. President Ali is ensuring that, far from a pipe dream, our country is in the midst of this transformation.