Gov’t bills businessman GYD $800,000 for destroying security feature on public road

The Best Buy Variety Store 

Four days after BIG Smith News Watch exposed the acts of a businessman who instructed his staff to break a security feature from a section of the public road along the East Coast Demerara, the Ministry of Public Infrastructure today announced that the man will be made to fix the damage. The security feature was being dismantled by the Best Buy Variety Store located at Non- Perial, East Coast Demerara.

The flattened security feature

In an estimate seen by this publication, the estimate for the proper demolishing and clearing of the concrete security feature which the workman broke will cost just over four thousand United States Dollar, the equivalent to just over eight hundred thousand Guyana dollars.

The estimate to rebuild the damage security feature

Last week when we spoke to the man who was braking the security feature he said that his boss gives him the instructions to do so and that the approval to his boss came from the neighborhood Democratic Council.

When contacted last week, the businessman said that he did not know that the issue was that serious and that he was just trying to find parking for his customers. It should be noted that where he was destroying was not even in front of his business premises but rather that of another private residence.

The NDC had also denied issuing any order or instruction to the businessman to demolish the government’s public infrastructure and made it clear that no such permission is ever issued to any individual or company by the NDC.

In a statement this after, the Ministry of Public Infrastructure warned persons against damaging public infrastructure. It should be noted that damage to public infrastructure carries a fine of fifty thousand dollars once found guilty.

We were told that there are moved to strengthen laws governing the destruction of public infrastructure since the fines associated with the damage and destruction are just a drop in the ocean compared to the costs to install the infrastructure which in recent years have been mostly modernized upgrades compared to what previously exists.