Bulkan blasts Manickchand over Kara Kara toll row

(Kaieteur News) – Former Minister of Communities Ronald Bulkan has accused Local Government Minister Priya Manickchand of acting as an “overlord” of constitutionally autonomous local government organs, as the controversy over tolls at Kara Kara Public Road in Linden escalates.

Bulkan’s intervention came after Manickchand on September 1 instructed Linden Town Clerk Lennox Gasper to “cease and desist immediately” from imposing or collecting any toll or charge at Kara Kara Public Road. But on the very day, the Minister issued that directive, the Official Gazette published Order No. 172 of 2026, signed by Manickchand herself, expressly revoking the Linden Town Council (Toll) By-Laws 2016, which had been gazetted on August 20, 2016.

Bulkan described the minister’s two positions as contradictory, asking whether she had deliberately misled the Linden municipality or whether “her left hand was unaware of what her right hand was doing.”