Latest update October 5th, 2024 12:59 AM
Sep 06, 2015 News
By Malisa Harry
The recent initiative by the new administration to reduce the Berbice Bridge Toll is at a standstill, with the Berbice Bridge Company including shareholders still to have their input in the reduction. The contractual agreement allows Hand in Hand Trust and New GPC to own fifty percent of the entity when their investments are only five percent. Equity shareholders whose investments are five percent ($400 million) of the total funds of the company are given controlling interest in the company. Against this backdrop, Berbicians shared their views on this issue. These are some of their responses.
· Bill, New Amsterdam – “It is not good for the country. The government should have
continuous negotiations and the shareholders along with the government should come to a compromise to alleviate the situation as it is”
· Murray, businessman – “It was an agreement with the previous government and investors but what I can tell you is that at that time the people were badly in need of a bridge and so the government try and do anything to make the bridge”
· Mohabir, gold dealer- “That bridge apparently belong to the PPP. It’s too hard and it’s too much to deal with as a citizen. They already had a deal but here is what we could do, give them the bridge and take revenue from them and let us get our own boat on the water top”.
· Gobin, vendor – “The government can make their own fee, but now they can’t interfere with the bridge because is a binding agreement, the only thing the government can do is nationalize the bridge and let the government pay off the company and let the government run it.”
· Mark Johnson – “It seems like the shareholders are only looking after their own interest and their financial gain. I think they should try to come to a compromise and reduce the crossing of the bridge. It could happen, depends on the shareholders interest of the country.”
· Ishmail King, entrepreneur – “I feel that decision that was made, the government just try to please the people because of the election promise that they made but if the decision cannot come through because of the private companies, I think what the government needs to do is to bring back the boat so it will be a competition with these shareholders who got big shares at the bridge company. The bridge should have been owned by the government; so if the government can’t rectify it with the shareholders, put back the two boat to cross the river, so people can use the boat to pay a cheaper fair rather than paying such an expensive fee on the bridge.”
· Mark, self employed – “The poor people are feeling the pressure because everybody that has to cross that bridge will have to pay exorbitant prices just to move from point A to point B. If the government who is in position now said that they are going to lower that bridge toll at $300 or $400, that would have been an ease enough for the poor people who have to cross everyday with their schoolchildren to go to school. And as to the government who was in position before, I figure as a normal Guyanese that they sell out the bridge, and that’s wrong because if it was a subsidy, in five years time that subsidy would have been paid off. No part of the world I travel as a seaman I never paid more than US $10, why we gotta pay a $4000 or $3000 to cross a bridge, just a couple of miles from way we living? The first government sell out the bridge and the Guyanese people that is why poor people got to face all this pressure.”
October 1st turn off your lights to bring about a change!
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