– says ministry, contractors working to make project operational as early as possible

NO new deadline has been set for completion of the East Demerara Water Conservancy (EDWC) Northern Relief Channel at Hope/Dochfour, Minister of Agriculture Dr. Leslie Ramsammy stated, but the Agriculture Ministry, the contractors and the engineers are working to make the project operational as early as possible.

The minister made these remarks yesterday during a visit to the project to get a first-hand look at progress. He was accompanied by the Chief Executive Officer, National Drainage and Irrigation Authority (NDIA), Lionel Wordsworth.
One of the four components of the project, the Hope Bridge, has been completed and Minister Ramsammy explained that it was considered essentially finished before the December 31 deadline.
“After so many visits, where we were looking at structures going up, we are now standing on a bridge with vehicles which we ourselves drove over this bridge…in terms of the contract that we have for the completion of this bridge, it is essentially completed. There is some landscaping work and so to be done for this bridge, but that is outside of the contract for this bridge,” he said.

The channel which will be the last aspect to be completed is 95 percent done, and cannot be fully realised until the project is ready to be operational. Minister Ramsammy explained that the reason for the incomplete work is that “we cannot open this channel to the sea or to the conservancy. We have to await the readiness of the whole project before we can complete the channel.”
There is also the shaping of the dam, “but as I have said all of 2013, the dams will be shaped and reshaped over a period of time, and it is possible that a year or two from now, we will still be doing some reshaping of the dam, but that does not affect the functioning of the channel,” he said.
The head regulator is sufficiently completed in terms of the superstructure. Minister Ramsammy noted that outside of the superstructure, the elements of the project that need to be completed will be done over the next several weeks.

The component of the project that posed the greatest challenge has been the sluice towards the sea side, but the ministry has worked with the contractor towards moving this aspect.
“I believe that going back into November (of 2013) there was a sense of hopelessness among many people to the extent where some people seriously considered terminating that contract; but within the Ministry of Agriculture and particularly within the NDIA, the engineers and the consultants believed that the termination of that contract would in fact have prolonged the completion date and we needed to work with the contractor.
“I want to commend the contractors for the work they [have] been doing with the ministry, and with the NDIA team; they have worked in accordance with a work plan,” Minister Ramsammy said.

The ministry and the contractor have agreed to have the outstanding work divided into several tranches, some of which are to be completed by February. The first few tranches would realise the completion of the superstructure for the sluice, he said.

“Work is ongoing right now to complete six tranches by mid-February and that would bring it to a stage where the superstructure for the four projects would be essentially completed, paving the way for the project’s operationalisation”, he explained.
“I saw that we have a deadline of April, but that’s a deadline that Kaieteur News made up. I am saying the work we are doing is trying to get to a stage where this project is completed and we could begin the hard work of operationalisation,” he said.
He explained that April is not a new deadline. The minister pointed out that the deadline was December 31. “Now we are beginning to do the kind of work that would mean that the work we did not complete by the December 31 deadline gets done as quickly as possible, and I would like to see the operationalisation of this by the end of April, so that when we get to the May-June rainfall, this channel would be working the way we envision that it would impact rainy seasons in Guyana,” he said.
“Next week we are going to get together again and we will begin planning. So far, all our plans have been on the construction of this channel and its related, associated structures; now we are seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, and we are seriously now looking at the functioning, the operationalisation of the channel,” he said.
The EDWC Northern Relief Channel at Hope/Doufour was undertaken with Government of Guyana resources. Minister Ramsammy was adamant the project will be completed within the budgetary allocations of just over $3B.
“This project, it was done by Guyanese contractors, Guyanese engineers and Guyanese workers, and for me, reaching this stage is more a sense of pride. I do understand that there will be concerns about the fact that we went beyond the construction deadline, and that is something we should always be concerned about, but we should also not forget that a project that many said was beyond the capacity of Guyanese contractors, workers and engineers has been essentially completed and successfully so,” the minister said.

(GINA)