Shas­tri Boodan

Fr­re­lance Cor­re­spon­dent

Traf­fic, ex­tor­tion and a short­age of forex were the most press­ing is­sues af­fect­ing Ch­agua­nas busi­ness op­er­a­tors in 2024.

These points were un­der­scored by Bal­dath Ma­haraj, pres­i­dent of the Ch­agua­nas Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce (CCIC) when he ad­dressed the CCIC’s an­nu­al Christ­mas and awards func­tion on Sat­ur­day at the Pas­sage to Asia Restau­rant.

Ma­haraj said traf­fic re­mains one of the most crit­i­cal is­sues in Ch­agua­nas, par­tic­u­lar­ly the grid­lock from east to west of the high­way and vice ver­sa. 

“It is clear that sig­nif­i­cant in­fra­struc­ture up­grades are nec­es­sary, and this has to be ac­tioned by the Min­istry of Works. We are call­ing for at least two over­pass­es to ease this traf­fic grid­lock. With­out this, the sit­u­a­tion will grad­u­al­ly wors­en,” he said.

Ma­haraj said the sit­u­a­tion was forc­ing shop­pers to go else­where. “We are al­ready see­ing shop­pers avoid­ing Ch­agua­nas be­cause of the ex­ist­ing de­lays. This is not just a loss of con­ve­nience for shop­pers, it’s a missed op­por­tu­ni­ty for busi­ness and com­merce”

He said busi­ness­men con­tin­ued to face se­vere chal­lenges in ac­cess­ing suf­fi­cient forex to im­port goods, meet op­er­a­tional needs, and ex­pand their busi­ness­es. To plan prop­er­ly, busi­ness­es need to un­der­stand how forex is dis­trib­uted.

Richie Sookhai, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Works, said a traf­fic plan that in­cludes the use of traf­fic war­dens was on the cards for the Christ­mas shop­ping sea­son. Sookhai al­so promised that the Gov­ern­ment would con­struct an over­pass.

He said the au­thor­i­ties are in the process of ac­quir­ing lands west of the high­way to cre­ate an easy ac­cess point for traf­fic to get on­to the high­way. The Ex­cel­lence in Busi­ness award went to Dr Aleem Mo­hammed, the CEO of SM Jaleel and Com­pa­ny.