The Private Sector Commission (PSC) has welcomed President Irfaan Ali’s plan to resuscitate the city called Project Rescue Georgetown.
Announced at a press conference on September 16, the PSC today said that the initiative represents a critical intervention to restore dignity to the capital city and position Georgetown as a modern, vibrant, and sustainable hub.
“For decades, Georgetown, once hailed as the Garden City of the Caribbean, has suffered from neglect and chronic mismanagement. Years of partisan obstruction and administrative failures have left behind clogged drains, garbage-strewn streets, deteriorating roads, dilapidated markets, and neglected public spaces. These conditions have not only undermined the quality of life for citizens but have also constrained investment, trade, and the ease of doing business.
“The PSC, therefore, welcomes Project Rescue Georgetown as a timely and necessary response. Its focus on improving waste management, rehabilitating canals and drainage systems, upgrading markets, modernising infrastructure, and restoring parks, boulevards, and heritage landmarks will significantly enhance the city’s functionality and attractiveness. Importantly, the organisation of vending zones and improved urban order will create a safer and more efficient environment for commerce”, a press release from the PSC said.
The release said that President Ali’s Project Rescue Georgetown builds on “his government’s consistent commitment to national transformation, with new roads, bridges, housing, hospitals, schools, and modern public infrastructure
being developed across Guyana. Extending this transformation to the capital ensures that Georgetown can truly match the pace of national growth and development”.
The PSC called on all stakeholders to lend full support to this initiative.
“Enforcement measures will be a critical part of the strategy, but we have to first build out the infrastructure, while you do some amount of enforcement, but we have to have a phased approach… and public education in this phase… a clear communication strategy, is critical,” President Ali said at the press conference on September 16.
He noted that in his first five years of government, it was highlighted that the capital needed urgent attention and pointed out that his administration had spent “billions of dollars” in infrastructural works to both clean up the city and give it a facelift.
“The condition of our city; the mismanagement and inefficiency, through which the city is managed can no longer be tolerated and we believe that it’s time for us, as citizens, and as a country to take charge of the situation. I want to launch, from the government’s [side], work in advancing the rescue of Georgetown,” he stressed.
“In the coming year or years, we’ll have an opportunity once again to choose the type of leadership in the city that will allow us to see this city transformed and managed in a way that will make all of us extremely proud. Notwithstanding that, we have launched, with the help of the King’s Foundation, a city revival plan that we are now going to move forward in implementing,” he added.
It was unclear from the President’s statement how the Georgetown City Council would be encompassed in the plan.
The King’s Foundation, first formed in 1990, is a charity founded by King Charles III as Prince of Wales – inspired by his philosophy of harmony.
Its website said: “Cutting across a range of sectors, disciplines and levels, The King’s Foundation represents areas where The King has been decades ahead of the curve, including in education and sustainability, farming and agriculture, traditional arts and crafts, health and wellbeing, and architecture and urbanism. We provide education, public services and consultancy across these sectors, in the UK and around the world”.
