Contractor may miss end of September deadline

MINISTER of Agriculture, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy, yesterday disclosed that work continues apace on the East Demerara Water Conservancy (EDWC) Northern Relief Channel, with about an additional six weeks of work remaining.The new timeline is expected to push the Hope Canal past the end of September deadline that was set.
“The contractor has met with some challenges,” he said.
Construction on the project began in February 2011, with an estimated 18 months for completion and the deadline for the project was initially set for June 2013, but was subsequently extended to the end of August, and then once again extended to December 31, 2013, then to June 30, 2014.
The EDWC Northern Relief Channel, the Hope Canal, which missed its June 30 deadline for completion, was given a new deadline in the latter part of July, when its completion was raised at the Parliamentary Sectoral Committee on Natural Resources and the Environment. The Agriculture Minister, when he appeared before the Committee, disclosed that the project will be completed in seven weeks, by September.
Yesterday he told the Guyana Chronicle that the ministry is working “very closely” with the contractor.
“Work continues on the outer sluice, but slowly. We are working with the contractor to finish. We are about 85 per cent complete. Also, as of now the eight doors for the sluice are available,” he said.
According to him, the contractor organised the remaining work into a weekly schedule to ensure greater efficiency in the completion of the project.
The project has four components: the more than 10-kilometre channel, the head regulator; the eight-gate sluice at the canal’s Atlantic end; and the EDWC Northern Relief Channel Public Road Bridge.
The latter was completed and commissioned in February.
Ramsammy told this newspaper that the head regulator has been completed and minor works have been completed on the more than 10-kilometre channel.
Additionally, the actual testing of the functionality of the channel will have to await the availability of an adequate fill volume of the channel.
Indications were that the US $15M Hope Canal project, which is expected to be the answer to flooding experienced in the Mahaica/Mahaicony/Abary (MMA) areas during rainy periods, would have been operational as the rainy season sets in. Residents in the MMA area over the years have lost crops and cattle in floods, during periods of heavy rainfall. As seen in the past, when the Maduni sluice has to be opened to drain the East Demerara Water Conservancy, residents in the MMA area have had to battle a rise in the Mahaica Creek – making the completion of the Hope Canal something that is much needed.

(Vanessa Narine)