President Dr Irfaan Ali on Tuesday met with a team from the University of Miami and other stakeholders involved in the development of Silica City, where the master plan for the project and areas of academic development for Guyana were discussed.
The delegation from the University was led by its President, Dr Julio Frank.
“The university is working along with the Government of Guyana to develop a master plan for Silica City. Today’s discussions also surrounded other areas for academic development in Guyana,” the Office of the President indicated.
Housing and Water Minister Collin Croal, Minister within the Housing and Water Ministry Susan Rodrigues, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Central Housing and Planning Authority Sherwyn Greaves, Director of Presidential Affairs Marcia Nadir-Sharma and representatives from the Guyana Innovation Group were also part of the meeting.
Work has already commenced in the young professional section of Silica City, Guyana’s first smart urban centre located along the Soesdyke-Linden Highway. The first phase of the project will see an initial 400 young professional homes being constructed.
In February, a $2.1 billion contract was inked to develop Silica City. It is envisioned that over the next two decades, this new city along the Linden-Soesdyke Highway will grow to hold more than 12,500 households. The new city is intended to be one of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic (PPP/C) Government’s climate change mitigation strategies.
It will initially cater to just over 3000 households in the first five years but 3800 acres of land has been earmarked for the new city, and designs for the first phase of the project will begin this year.
The city will be a smart one, powered by renewable energy and developed with the Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and Goal 11 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).Silica City is a development the PPP/C Government had initiated talks on prior to leaving office in 2015, but which was never continued under the succeeding A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) coalition Government.
In his first year in office in 2020, President Dr Irfaan Ali had revealed that Government had begun discussions on Silica City as a secondary city. He had explained that the Government was looking at an area on the Linden-Soesdyke Highway that would be connected to the new four-lane bypass road.
