Vancouver firm wins transportation project in Guyana

ND LEA Consultants of Vancouver have won a contract to do a feasibility and preliminary design study on improving road transportation in Guyana.
Though the company has done work in the neighbouring Caribbean islands for 30 years, this contract is their first successful bid in Guyana. The firm competed successfully for the work against other large Canadian and international engineering firms.
The study will involve investigating an alternative route for the 40-kilometre road from Guyana’s capital Georgetown to the international airport at Timehri. Suresh Bhatta, manager of international operations at ND LEA, says they need to find a new alignment because the existing road is a single-lane roadway that passes through built-up areas and has sharp curves.
The consulting engineering firm will also be studying ways of solving the capital city’s public transportation and congestion problems. Bhatta explains that at present public transport in Georgetown consists mostly of mini-vans.
About 700,000 people live in Guyana, with about half that number in Georgetown. There are more than a million Guyanese living in Toronto and the New York area — more than the number of Guyanese who live in their home country.