By Infrastructure & Community Desk | ESSEQUIBO COAST, 24 July 2025

Dawn broke over Lima Sands with the roar of earth‑movers carving out a stretch of asphaltic concrete that residents have awaited for decades. By mid‑morning Minister within the Ministry of Public Works Deodat Indar stood beside the churned‑up earth and declared that the project would transform lives by replacing pothole‑ridden dirt with a smooth, twenty‑foot‑wide roadway. The G$438.7‑million upgrade—phase five of a multi‑year scheme—adds 2.4 kilometres to an earlier five‑kilometre section and will give the community an unbroken link to the Essequibo Coast highway.

Although short in length, the road carries outsized economic weight. Farmers who now lose up to fifteen percent of cassava and pineapple to jostling damage expect spoilage to drop by half. Tour operators eye day‑trip packages to nearby Tapakuma Lake once dusty detours disappear. Real‑estate agents predict land values could rise by a fifth, letting households leverage property for small‑business loans. Indar insisted that contractors hire locally so that pay‑cheques cycle through the village before leaking to the coast; heavy‑equipment operator Kelvin Persaud said earning a Mahdia‑level wage five minutes from home is life‑changing.

The Lima Sands job forms part of a broader Region Two push. Hours earlier, Indar launched a G$186‑million upgrade of the Mainstay access road and a G$139‑million replacement of two timber bridges with concrete‑steel spans. Together, the works create a northern corridor linking eco‑tourism sites, rice mills and the Suddie hospital. Financing comes seventy percent from the Natural‑Resource Fund’s infrastructure window and thirty percent from the national capital budget, a mix that keeps debt‑to‑GDP at a comfortable thirty‑four percent.

Environmental safeguards include French drains to handle intense rainfall, reuse of milled laterite on feeder tracks to curb dust and a roadside replanting scheme to offset felled stakes. Planners have built in a two‑week cushion for rain delays but remain confident of formal commissioning by mid‑October.

For government strategists the fresh tarmac is proof that oil wealth is reaching rural doorsteps. Political scientist Dr Roxanne Persaud notes that visible infrastructure challenges the perception that prosperity hugs only Georgetown. Opposition MP Vinceroy Jordan counters that hinterland arteries still lag, pointing to delays on the Bartica–Potaro link, but government engineers say procurement is done and mobilisation begins in August.

By Independence Day villagers should feel the difference under their tyres. Come 1 September, PPP/C hopes that new‑road scent still lingers in voters’ minds. For now, the rise and fall of road rollers is a tangible sign that the slogan “No Village Left Behind” is rolling forward in asphalt and aggregate, metre by metre.