Time was when Bartica appeared to have satisfied itself with being known simply as the ‘Gateway to the Interior’. Apart from benefitting from the movement of the miners through the community en route to the goldfields, and perhaps more importantly their stopovers, the proximity of gold offered a permanent option for Barticians seized with the urge to lift themselves above the wage-earning jobs and modest agricultural pursuits that kept many of the residents tied to a moderate existence. Those considerations apart, Bartica also has derived some limited economic gain from being a not unattractive locale for visitors as well as host to the popular Bartica Regatta.
These days, perceptions of Bartica are changing. Many believe that the community only really came of age in May 2016 when, amidst ceremonial drumrolls and cheering crowds, President David Granger and the community’s Mayor, Gifford Marshall, unveiled a plaque as part of a high-profile ceremony to accord the community township status. Just over three years later, in June 2019, Cabinet met at the Bartica Town Hall for the first time.
Those were the symbolic signs of Bartica’s accelerated rise to a formal national recognition that it had not previously enjoyed; though, understandably, the attendant infrastructural appurtenances have lagged behind. The signs are, however, that these will come in the fullness of time. The main streets are paved and even in the face of a gold-mining industry that has fallen on challenging times, hotel accommodation and entertainment facilities are still at a pleasing standard. The cars, mostly taxis, are mainly of the popular brands. Gradually, Bartica is beginning to fit into its skin of the township status that it now enjoys.
What symbolises Bartica’s rise as much as anything else is its popularity as a place to visit for locals and foreigners. The attendant investment in hotel accommodation is a dead giveaway in this regard. There are, these days, more than a dozen hotels (some of them impressively well-appointed) in Bartica and all of these are well worth staying in.
Lot 20-22 Third Avenue in Bartica houses the Palm Springs Hotel, a more than eye-catching multi-million dollar facility run by a couple, Ramcharran Budhoo and Rehana Rahim. These days the Palm Spring is home away from home to mostly tourists, travelling businessmen and women and government officials ‘on the move’. When Stabroek Business visited last week, Rehana was ‘sitting in’ for her husband who was away on business.
In Rehana, we found none of the caginess usually associated with businesspeople reluctant to open up to the media. She spoke with the fluency of a focussed investor, tracing, in a relatively brief period, the ebb and flow of the business venture that now preoccupies herself and her husband as a team.
Prior to investing in the Palm Spring Hotel they ran a successful outlet at Mahdia offering fuel, food and mining supplies to the miners. A marked reduction in gold-mining activity coupled with what Rehana termed “the crime situation” made them quit in 2016. Afterwards, they invested in the acquisition of a partially erected structure at 20-22 Third Avenue. Rehana recalled that the two poured themselves into the design and construction of the facility. It is a handsome, modern, well-appointed facility, outfitted with spacious rooms and a tasteful restaurant. Mindful of some of the community’s pursuits associated with being a township, the couple have since closed a bar that proved to be not financially worth the while, opting instead to transform it into what has turned out to be a more worthwhile investment. Relatively inexpensive at $75,000 for parties and $25,000 for regular conferences, the Conference Centre is already fully booked for all of the Christmas season. The hotel’s rooms, which are fitted with air conditioning and hot and cold water are priced at between $12,000 and $18,000. When we arrived there it was fully booked.
Managing a multi-million dollar investment does not afford the couple the luxury of pretenses. Rehana readily admits that they do not anticipate any significant return on their investment in the near future. Recently, they have had to reduce the hotel staff from twenty-two to eighteen. Like the various other hotels in Bartica, the Palm Spring relies heavily on the Easter ‘hordes’ that swarm Bartica for the Annual Regatta.
Barticians have been long accustomed to living through the ebb and flow of the goldfields and the changing fortunes that attend this phenomenon. It has, however, had its constants, like the economic tiding-over that comes with the good fortune of an annual Regatta that triggers its one-off tourist boom when you make every dollar that you can and the resilience of investors like Ramcharran and Rehana who persist in investing guts as much as financial resources in a sector which they believe will, given the nature of Bartica, always come through for them.
