In a campaign like visit to the East Coast Demerara community of Victoria on Wednesday night, President Irfaan Ali told residents that he is serious about addressing their concerns and looking into the problems plaguing the community.

Victoria is the first village to be bought by freed African slaves and is predominantly an Afro-Guyanese community.

During the outdoor meeting under the night sky, residents complained about several issues ranging from the deplorable state of roads and bridges in the community to the need for unemployment among youths in the village to be addressed.

An elderly woman told the President that “from a child growing up, it is the first PPP President that has paid Victoria this visit, and we are happy and glad. And as you said, this is the first village that was bought by ex-slaves, and that is to show that our people have something in us, but we hope and we pray that you will pay us some attention”.

Another resident while commending the President for visiting the village said unemployment is a major problem in the community.

“I would like to see a learning centre being put up in this community so that our youths can be trained…we have certified people in this community that can help, we have a lot of youths in this community that we can help”, he said.

President Ali in response, said he agrees that ways must be found to empower more young people to get qualified for jobs.

“And that is why we have to look to the future, and that is why we want to invest in making them entrepreneurs, and getting them involved in agriculture and business, and beekeeping. If we have 15 of them who are interested in beekeeping, we are going to train them and we are going to give them the capital to get five hives each so that they can start to build a business on their own. And that is what we are doing, we will give them an opportunity in agriculture, and if you have 40 young people now who want to get involved in the construction sector, give us their names, because every single day, contractors are looking for people”, President Ali said.

With regard to the infrastructure needs of the Victoria community, President Ali said works will begin on a number of roads and bridges in the area soon. With a Works Ministry Engineer at his side, he highlighted the number of roads in the communities that are slated to be built and repaired, explaining that the projects are already catered for in the budget.

He said he intends to move around the country to other communities to hear and act on the complaints from the citizens directly.

The Government has rolled out a $1.1 Trillion budget that caters heavily for infrastructure works across the country.

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