A hinterland community readies itself for township status
community a nocturnal ‘live wire’ but both Fraser and Adams concede that there is a social downside to the phenomenon that includes, amongst some younger residents an addiction to night life and the negatives that sometimes come with it.
Both Chamber officials also concede that at Mahdia “education is a challenge.” Adams explains that much of the problem has to do with difficulties associated with recruiting qualified and experienced teachers to work in the community. He says that a significant percentage of the teachers working at Mahdia are underqualified and undertrained. Accordingly, he believes that with the best will in the world their work makes only a limited contribution to raising the standard of education and improving eligibility for employment in a community seeking to embrace a more sophisticated business culture which, by definition, will require more of broader range of skills and aptitudes.
There are concerns, too, about drug addiction and teen-age pregnancy. “There is need for a stronger state-run social infrastructure to respond to these problems,” Fraser says.
One miner with whom the Stabroek Business spoke at Mahdia appeared altogether indifferent to the transformations which the new Chamber of Commerce promise. Old habits die hard and reports of a gradual drift away from the area by small gold miners does little to conceal the fact that business is still driven largely by the mining sector. The drift is also put down to the fact that these days, gold mining at Mahdia has become entangled in a thicket of land rights disputes that can sometimes turn ugly and which, some miners say, the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission does not appear to have any hurried interest in resolving.