– Luncheon says problem corrected yesterday
HEAD of the Presidential Secretariat Dr. Roger Luncheon said the media have overblown the situation at the Supenaam stelling, saying that it is just a matter of a pontoon shifted by the high tide and that it would have been fixed by yesterday. Asked about the state of the stelling at his weekly press briefing held at the Office of the President yesterday, Dr. Luncheon said, “Well, it was working up to when it stopped working. I am advised that it would start back working today.”

“This failure…some of it was dereliction and some of it was natural. The very high tide, I am advised, actually elevated the pontoon out of its mooring. What is taking time is to refloat the pontoon – because, apparently, the tide is not as high anymore – and put it back in connection with the members on the wharf,” he said.

The HPS continued, “The front end – I am advised by Minister of Transport and Hydraulics Robeson Benn, is completed and the back end is to be done. Up to this morning (yesterday), he advised me that this would be done before the day is out. There is no new construction. There was not any loss of functioning that took place. It was a dislocation of the pontoon.”

Dr. Luncheon opined that if the design of the stelling had taken account of the tidal behaviour, it had not done so adequately, if it had at all.

“The point I was making is, after the rehabilitation effort that was of some significance, this failure was not of any similar ignificance…this was a pontoon that was elevated out of its fixed mooring by high tides,” Luncheon told reporters.

He admonished the media for not differentiating between occurrences that have an impact and those that do not in their reporting.