As a part of the government’s plan to create urban safe spaces, the old Georgetown train station will be rehabilitated and converted into a prime tourist attraction, Public Works Minister Juan Edghill disclosed last week in the National Assembly.
“The intent is to rehabilitate that part where the old train station and train is so that people can go and see what the train used to look like… We are not changing the outlook nor the structures but we are renewing and rehabilitating it and putting it to use for Guyana,” Edghill disclosed. At the time he was responding to questions from Opposition Member David Patterson during the consideration of estimates.
The old train station and the train relic that sits on the land between High and Parade streets in Kingston, will become a part of the beautification project. Government in 2021 embarked on beautification project of the once controversial Lamaha Embankment reserve which stretches from High Street all the way to Vlissingen Road.
“With Guyana becoming a tourist destination, part of the vision of Lamaha Street where the old train station was located… apart from being a safe space for children and families, we intend to put in place an art gallery, we intend to be able to allow and facilitate local foods so that the people from the prime hotels could come down there and have breakfast in the mornings; the people from the ministries nearby could go and get a good Guyanese lunch,” Edghill explained to the National Assembly.
He went on to say that the transformation project has been advancing and in this conversion of space, they are changing the image of a “graveyard of old excavators, trucks and junk and bringing it as part of the beautification urban rehabilitation and renewal programme,” for the city.
Works on the stretch of reserve commenced last year following a city wide clean-up campaign spearheaded by President Irfaan Ali.
Ali stated that it was his desire to make the city family-oriented, “where families can come out and families can find a safe zone in which we can build not only a relationship between families but relationship between communities.”
