…despite his letter offering clarifications
Prime Minister Sam Hinds yesterday put to rest the assertion that Synergy Holdings Inc. signed a Memorandum of Understanding(MOU) for the Amaila Falls Hydropower Project in 2006, saying that the document signed in that year was in relation to a call by the Guyana Power and Light for Independent Power Producers to come on board in electricity generation. Speaking at a hurriedly called press conference at his office yesterday, the Prime Minister produced to reporters copies of the signature page of the MOU for the Amaila Project signed on June 26, 1998, between the Government of Guyana, represented by Hinds, and Synergy Holdings Inc., represented by Makeshwar ‘Fip’ Motilall, and Harza International Development Company Inc.,  represented by Vice President Frank Dickerson.
The Kaieteur News, in its latest report on the issue, said that the agreement signed between the Guyana Power and Light and Motilall’s company in 2006 had to do with the hydro, financial closure of which should be finalised by the end of this year and commissioning of the project by 2015.
Hinds explained that in the mid-2000s, the Guyana Power and Light, facing a generation shortfall crisis, put out a call for partners willing to come on board with new generation. At that time, the government was not of a mind to purchase new generators and wanted to work with Independent Power Providers (IPPs). [The Amaila 1998 MOU]
Hinds explained that the 2006 MOU shown in the Kaieteur News article has to do with the response by Synergy to that call from GPL. “Synergy and others did bring proposals. But the cost was greater than we thought was prudent,” said Hinds.
Hinds said that the Kaieteur News was “going out of its way” to distort the issue and mislead the public, adding that their articles on the matter have “glaring” errors.
“You would recall in [Thursday’s] newspapers there were some headlines in the Kaieteur News and Stabroek News, and I thought that they seemed to continue innuendos about some corruption that has happened or is happening, with respect to the Amaila project, or they wanted to be flippant about it. And I felt that this was really harmful to our people, because many of our people have not had any experience in these sort of matters, in how large projects get done, and I think the Kaieteur News and Stabroek News could have been helpful in educating people in how these large projects get done,” he said.
Noting the letter he had published yesterday complaining about the way the articles were presented, he complimented the way Stabroek News presented the issue yesterday because of his intervention through the letter.
“But Kaieteur News seems to have gone out of its way to even more distort and mislead people on it; and in fact, [Kaieteur News] has glaring errors in their attempts to make out that something seems to be wrong and the Minister responsible – myself – seems to be misrepresenting things,” he said.
He noted that the Amaila MOU was signed in 1998, when Motilall began to work to study the development of the hydro.
According to Hinds, during the time when electricity-generating capacity of GPL diminished, it was thought that instead of procuring new equipment, collaborating with IPPs was the preferred way forward.
“We have always been looking at ways to improve the electricity situation in Guyana, in particular the generation [of it]. As you may recall, when we came into government, outages were extensive and we started putting Wartsila units using money from the Treasury and we had gotten [six] machines in. But at that time, people were advocating IPPs as the way to go. We also talked with a number of companies about putting in IPP to help increase generation. We looked at a number of companies [with a view to having them] provide power. One of them was Synergy Holdings Inc. itself,” Hinds said.
He said, “eventually we put in a station on our own which we opened in November/December 2009 and right now we are adding to it.”
“[It is that either] Kaieteur News does not understand anything that is not very, very, very simple, or they purposely set out to distort and to mislead the public and create mischief ,and I am more inclined to believe the latter. I don’t think that they are so simple that they do not understand.”
Hinds also took issue with the Kaieteur News handling of his response to their queries on the subject. He said that as stated in the article, someone from the Kaieteur News contacted him asking questions about his signature on the 2006 document. He said that he could not provide answers on a document that the newspaper had in its possession but that he did not have in front of him. Contrary to what the Kaieteur News article said, he said that he was never shown the document by the newspaper.
Hinds explained that large projects get done, in most cases, with usually a person or small company, which is enthusiastic about something because they have been close to it for a while. “They do enough work and advance it for a while, and they look for a larger company, with more money, more people and more resources to pick it up and carry it forward,” he said.
He also took up the issue of the “sale” by Motilall to Sithe Global. “I know that we can get very technical about words, but it is not so much an issue of ‘sold’, it is a matter of partnering and coming together to complete the project and put it [into operation],” he said.
“We in Guyana must look forward to a number of large projects being done, and if people don’t understand it, this leads to a lot of unnecessary frustration and suspicions, and I think it is a great loss to us the way Kaieteur News has been playing this matter. It is very unfortunate. It is doing our country and all of us great harm,” said the Prime Minister.