Introduction
The Demerara Harbour Bridge is vested in and operated by a public corporation, while the Berbice Bridge was built and is operated by the Berbice Bridge Company Inc, a private company under a Build, Operate and Transfer Agreement. The Demerara Bridge was constructed under the Burnham administration in 1978 and vested in a public corporation in 2003. The toll for a motor car to cross the Berbice River is $2,200. The toll to cross the Demerara River is $100. There does seems something quite inequitable in such an arrangement and one wonders why a government that draws so much of its support from Regions 5 and 6 would subject its residents to the kind of high fares that the private company charges.
By now, everyone is aware that the country has long come out of an IMF arrangement and even if the bridge was constructed when Guyana was under such an arrangement, the Jagdeo administration was still willing to defy the IMF and World Bank to build the ill-fated Skeldon Sugar Factory, and the stadium. And we have been willing to invest in a $3 billion fibre-optic cable, a specialty tourism hospital and a hotel.
Ghost town
Since the bridge opening in late 2008, business in New Amsterdam has fallen off dramatically. Understandably, if not entirely justifiably then, the
