[www.inewsguyana.com] – Leader of the People’s National Congress Reform (PNCR) and Chairman of A Partnership for National Unity (APNU), David Granger has repeated his pledge to residents of the Lethem to make their ‘settlement’ into a full-fledged ‘town’ under an APNU administration within one year of the next general and regional elections.
A media release from the APNU noted that Granger pointed out that the Rupununi – at over 58,000 km² – was larger than Costa Rica and six times the size of Puerto Rico.
“It is the largest region the country yet it did not possess a single town,” the media release noted.
Granger met residents of Tabatinga on the outskirts of Lethem who complained about land allocation, housing, drug-trafficking, solid waste disposal, street lighting, poor roads, high electricity tariffs, poor public services, unemployment, traffic confusion involving foreigners driving on the ‘wrong’ side and other matters.
Granger, reacting to the residents’ complaints, asserted that Lethem was fully-qualified to be a town like Anna Regina, Rose Hall and other places. It was noted that Lethem already had its own aerodrome, banks, electricity and water supply, hospital, hotels, magistrate’s court military and police stations, port-of-entry, churches, schools supermarkets, hardware stores and other amenities.
“There was nothing, except the resistance of the People’s Progressive Party Civic government, to prevent Lethem from becoming a town,” the release added.
The Opposition Leader decried the government’s tendency to regard the Rupununi as a backward border region.
“The government had no right to obstruct the election of a municipal council for Lethem. He promised that an APNU administration would improve governance in what is actually Guyana’s largest region. He committed APNU to holding municipal and local government elections and to establishing Lethem as a town with its own freely-elected mayor and town councilors,” the release noted.
This, Granger said, was the fastest and surest way to encourage the commercial and economic development of the Region.
