CARISA LEE

Re­porter

Ma­yaro res­i­dents can ex­pect to get ac­cess to their new li­brary by the end of this fis­cal year.

That's ac­cord­ing to the Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tions in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Symon de No­bri­ga.

Last week, Guardian Me­dia spoke to res­i­dents who com­plained about wait­ing over six months for the new li­brary on Guayagua­yare Road. They go to the Rio Claro Pub­lic Li­brary since the Ma­yaro Pub­lic Li­brary at Plai­sance Road was closed on De­cem­ber 1, 2023.

The res­i­dents said they have to trav­el to Rio Claro to use the li­brary.

“It’s been a very big in­con­ve­nience to go all the way to Rio Claro and back just to print a cou­ple of doc­u­ments that could have been done right in Ma­yaro,” one res­i­dent said.

He added that while he was able to trav­el there, it might be more of a strug­gle for stu­dents to vis­it the Rio Claro li­brary.

Min­is­ter de No­bri­ga said the Na­tion­al Li­brary and In­for­ma­tion Sys­tem Au­thor­i­ty (NALIS) is work­ing with MTS as the project man­ag­er.  At present, the new li­brary is in the process of be­ing fit­ted out and NALIS and MTS are ad­dress­ing items raised on a snag list dur­ing the last in­spec­tion.

He said pro­cure­ment is un­der­way of fur­ni­ture, books, com­put­ers, etc.

The min­is­ter said be­cause of the old li­brary's age and size, it sim­ply could not ser­vice the needs of the com­mu­ni­ty any­more.