All of the physical infrastructure is still not yet in place to cause Guyana to become anointed as the favoured destination for high-profile gatherings of regional and international significance, though there is evidence that we are getting there; the process, in itself, gives rise to what, sometimes, can be unbearable inconveniences. Whoever said the positive transformation, makeover, if you like, does not come at a price. Long before oil came along, Georgetown had ceased to be a ‘garden city’. It had come to resemble a ‘run down’ but important ‘outpost’ which, largely for administrative reasons, held the rest of the country together. Tidying up efforts are clearly in evidence, though the simultaneous ‘rolling out’ of projects across the various critical areas of physical infrastructure continue to give rise to considerable inconvenience, even confusion.
Within all this is a capital, a business hub that had long lost such ‘shape’ as it had. Construction clearly intended for the expansion of the private sector is springing up everywhere, sometimes in the form of renovation of ‘run down’ structures and, as well, in huge investments in new structures clearly intended for entrepreneurial pursuits the size of which the capital has never seen previously. And alongside this is evidence of billions of dollars in investments in requisites like hotels and places of entertainment though the overall makeover has its own implications for a condition of disorder that will take time to remedy. Image, as the saying goes, is everything.
