residents of the inside of the territory are ready for highway opening | EUROtoday

This was a promise from Emmanuel Macron throughout the 2022 presidential marketing campaign in Guyana: “We will continue to open up the West and the interior”with notably “the river road”, the candidate wrote in a letter to voters. Included within the 2016 regional improvement plan, the “river road” mission should join Apatou to Maripasoula, i.e. 180 kilometers within the Amazon forest, alongside the Maroni, the border river with Suriname.

Two years after candidate Macron's electoral promise, the 25,000 inhabitants of Grand-Santi, Papaichton and Maripasoula don’t have any information of the mission. Lacking a highway to get to the coast, which concentrates 90% of the 300,000 Guyanese and a lot of the providers, the inhabitants of the inside depends upon canoes and planes.

1^er October 2023, following the chapter of Air Guyane, common air service – sponsored by the Territorial Collectivity of Guyana (CTG) and the State – was interrupted for 2 months, till taken over by a brand new firm early December. In between, the Community has chartered a airplane accessible below circumstances to make sure the transition. At the identical time, transport by canoe has been restricted by the drop within the river degree since October, as a result of dry season, which is extra pronounced this yr. On December 23, 4 kids died in a shipwreck, the river being extra harmful when the waters are low.

” Its a question of life or death “

“We were taken hostage, it was very difficult to move around for two months”, deplores Philippe Dekon, entrepreneur in Maripasoula and president of the Apachi collective, “road” in Aluku – the language of one of many Bushinengue peoples, descendants of Maroon slaves who fled from Suriname. Founded in 2022 by residents of the inside, the associative collective claims greater than 400 supporters. He relaunched the demand for total highway entry to Guyana, organizing a number of conferences till the signing, on October 28, 2023, of a dedication by elected officers, the collective and members of civil society, to behave collectively. The work continues in an advert hoc fee created by the CTG.

“The river road is essential to the development of the territory”argues Sophie Charles, mayor of Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni and president of the Community of Communes of Western Guyana (CCOG), which brings collectively the municipalities of Maroni. “We send teams to collect garbage in canoes on the river… With the low water, one of them almost overturned, it’s a question of life and death”warns the president of the CCOG.

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