By Tracey Khan – Drakes
[www.inewsguyana.com] – The Mahdia road remains in a deplorable state and is frustrating residents and gold miners in the area.
Regional Chairman in Region 8 Chairman, Mark Crawford said, “Residents of Mahdia are fed-up with the state of the roads in their community, persons accessing the main services at Mahdia are forced to navigate through numerous potholes to get to where they want to be”.
He explained that roads to the Post Office, Police Station, GGMC Mines Office and the Hospital are all in a deplorable state. According to him, the RDC under the AFC’s leadership had made submissions in their 2014 Budget for money to repair the inner Mahdia roads. However, he noted that the Finance Ministry refused to include allocations for these roads in the National Budget for 2014.
According to Crawford, Local Government Minister Norman Whittaker advised that miners repair these roads. The Chairman deems this as a slap in the face of the residents, miners and the RDC.
“The Minister and the Government he serves is continuously asking miners to increase gold production and declaration as they recognise that gold is now the backbone of their country’s economy, but while the government is willing to collect the revenues earned form gold; they are unwilling to spend some of that same revenue to fix the roads in Mahdia, the central hub for gold mining in Region Eight,” Crawford said.
This made him question why the minister has not requested other RDC’s to have framers or sugar workers assist in repairing roads that are badly damaged.
He has called this blatant “eye-pass to the max” from Government.
With all the GOLD that Region #8 produces year in and year out, the infrastructure there should be the BEST in the country. What the hell’s really going on with the Central government and the way it is treating non-PPP Communities..??!!!!!!!!