Yesterday morning about 36 hire cars which ply the East Bank Berbice route were lined up in Glasgow Village to protest the deplorable state of the main access road from Mara to New Amsterdam.

Selling space at Rosignol and NA stellings  Gajraj protecting lives  NA-stelling-Hamid  Berbice-stellings

This protest by the hire car drivers meant that commuters, including school children and office workers, had to find alternative means of transportation to and from New Amsterdam from about 6 am yesterday to some time around noon.

According to Maxwell Semple, Chairman of the East Bank Berbice Hire Car Association, they had protested twice before and "little or nothing" had been done. He told Stabroek News that after a similar protest earlier this year, Regional Chairman Zulfikar Mustapha gave a commitment "to look after the road" but nothing much has been done since.

Meanwhile, following a meeting late yesterday afternoon between the regional chairman and the hire car operators he disclosed that a contract would be awarded today so work on the road should commence soon. Meantime, patch work will be done and later there would be a total resurfacing of the road, the chairman said.

Semple told Stabroek News that he was satisfied "so far" as some machines were already in place to smooth certain parts of the road as promised. He also remarked that protest was the only way to get things done.

He recalled that a contract had been awarded previously to a contractor and work had commenced. However, work was subsequently halted after the hire car association pointed out that the contractor did not have the requisite equipment.

According to Semple, the contractor was using "a roller as if he rolling cricket pitch," in order to compact the "crusher run" material to "full dem pot holes in the road."

The stones, he said, were easily displaced as soon as they were put in the holes as there was no tar to hold them in place. "The work was not one quarter to completion when we had to stop it."

According to Mohammed Ali, a hire car owner who is a member of the association, the contract that was awarded previously was worth $3.7 million and it was for the repair of holes on the road covering some three miles.

However he blamed the RDC for awarding the contract to someone who was not "qualified" because "he doesn't even have any machine, none grader, none heavy roller… how you guh repair road with cricket pitch roller?"

He told Stabroek News that this East Bank Berbice access road is one of the worst in the region and it has been this way for years. And since this is the main access road from New Amsterdam to Mara, "the regional authority should pay more attention to it."

Christian Warde, a resident of Glasgow who does not own a vehicle, said however that he would fully support the protest action taken by the association since the residents, including their children, depend on the hire cars for transportation to and from New Amsterdam. He told Stabroek News that he "can feel the frustration of them drivers" and it is the residents who may eventually suffer "financially or otherwise."

According to reports, the regional chairman had turned down a request by the hire car association to meet the drivers at Glasgow, so the 36 odd cars with residents inside formed a convoy and blared their horns all the way through New Amsterdam to the Regional Office to meet the regional chairman there.

The protesters spent more than an hour demonstrating outside before they were allowed to meet with the chairman.