THE remaining six weeks of work on the East Demerara Water Conservancy (EDWC) Northern Relief Channel resumes today, according to Agriculture Minister, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy.

“We have six weeks work left, beginning from Tuesday (today)…I expect that on Tuesday coming, work on site will be more diligent,” he said.
The contractor for the project is Courtney Benn Contracting Services (CBCS).
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 date 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.

LIQUIDATED DAMAGES
The Minister noted too that given the continued delays with the project, the issue of liquidated damages is not off the table.
“The accommodation of the contractor does not mean that the contractor will escape liquidated damages,” he said.
However, Dr. Ramsammy made it clear that the liquidated damages will not be “inflicted” on the contractor as of now, since that would mean a further delay, as late as 2015, for the completion of the project.
The Agriculture Minister stressed too that the work produced by the contractor has been quality work. “The difficulty we have is the sloth of the work,” he said.
“Some of the difficulties that the contractor has encountered can be resolved by the ministry, and so all we are doing is working in partnership with the contractor so that those difficulties are removed,” he said.
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.
Dr. Ramsammy told this newspaper that the head regulator has been completed and minor works remain on the more than 10-kilometre channel, while over 80 per cent of the work on the outer sluice has been completed.
Additionally, the actual testing of the functionality of the channel will have to await the availability of an adequate volume of water to fill the channel.
Indications were that the US$15M Hope Canal project, which is expected to be the answer to the flooding experienced in the Mahaica/Mahaicony/Abary(MMA) areas during rainy periods, would be operational as the rainy season sets in. Residents in the MMA area over the years have lost crops and cattle in floods, during the rainy period. 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 to battle a rise in the Mahaica Creek – making the completion of the Hope Canal something that is much needed.(Vanessa Narine)