Guyana Declares Public Purpose for Versailles to Parika Highway Reserve

Georgetown — A new statutory order has declared the public road reserve running from Plantation Versailles to the Parika Highway to be required for a public purpose, clearing the way for the state to acquire land along that corridor. The instrument is Order No. 190 of 2026, The Acquisition of Lands for Public Purposes (Public Road Reserve – Plantation Versailles to Parika Highway) Order 2026, published in Gazette No. 408/2026 of Saturday 24 October 2026 at page 1075.

The order appears in the Legal Supplement – B of the gazette, the part of the issue reserved for subsidiary legislation. It is the longest item of delegated legislation in the issue: the Acts section records “Nil”, the Bills section records “Nil”, and the only other instrument printed is Order No. 189 of 2026, the Guyana National Bureau of Standards (GYS 264 and GYS 523 LPG Standards) Order 2026, which begins at page 1065.

Its long title places it squarely inside Guyana’s land-acquisition regime, the Acquisition of Lands for Public Purposes Act, Chapter 62:05 of the Laws of Guyana — the statute under which the state has taken land for roads, drainage and other public works, including tracts later transported to private owners under orders such as Order No. 45 of 1988. Crucially, the order names a road reserve rather than an individual parcel as the subject of the declaration, so the whole reserved strip between the two named points falls within its scope.

A corridor fixed by two endpoints

Plantation Versailles sits on the west bank of the Demerara River, in the county of Demerara, where land records in the same gazette describe blocks subdivided into house lots and small holdings. Parika lies on the east bank of the Essequibo River, and the name Parika Highway is used in registered addresses for properties on the East Bank Essequibo.

By defining the subject as the reserve between those two points, the order fixes the affected area by reference to the road alignment itself rather than by a schedule of named proprietors in its title. Owners and occupiers inside that strip are therefore brought within a single acquisition framework.

Two road-land orders in one month

Order No. 190 of 2026 is the second land-acquisition instrument for a road project to reach the gazette in October. The issue of 10 October 2026 carried Order No. 182 of 2026, The Acquisition of Lands for Public Purposes (Road Extension Heroes Highway to Ogle/Timehri Highway) Order 2026, at page 947.

• Order No. 190 of 2026 — Public Road Reserve, Plantation Versailles to Parika Highway; page 1075, Gazette No. 408/2026 of 24 October 2026.
• Order No. 189 of 2026 — Guyana National Bureau of Standards (GYS 264 and GYS 523 LPG Standards) Order 2026; page 1065, same issue.
• Order No. 182 of 2026 — Road Extension, Heroes Highway to Ogle/Timehri Highway; page 947, gazette of 10 October 2026.

What changes for landholders

Once a reserve is declared a public purpose, landholders within it stop dealing with the open market and start dealing with the state as acquirer, with their claim for loss channelled through the compensation machinery of the Acquisition of Lands for Public Purposes Act, Chapter 62:05. Title, occupation and encumbrances along the corridor — mortgages, leases and rights of way of the kind recorded in the same gazette’s transport and mortgage notices — become matters to be settled against that process.

The practical effect is that a stretch of the country’s main east–west road link, on the western side of the Demerara and running through to the Essequibo crossing at Parika, is now formally designated for public acquisition. For residents and small owners along the reserve, the gazette notice of 24 October is the starting point of that process.

Source: The Official Gazette of Guyana, No. 408/2026, 24 October 2026, Legal Supplement – B (Subsidiary Legislation), p. 1075 (official reference: Order No. 190 of 2026).