ONE cannot help but applaud President Ali on his stand taken on the CJIA matter. All Guyanese are appalled with the total incompetence and mismanagement of this project to date, and the willful disregard to the original contract which must be completed as per the signed contract. Guyana never paid for a refurbished third world airport with finishes so utterly devoid of any standards, and materials so poor in quality, that I would not even put in my barn if I had one.

We the Guyanese people must stand firmly behind our President that this contract must be respected fully and restored to international accepted norms. I had suggested to the previous administration that a professional, international airport management company be retained, which could supervise the construction to international standards, plan our future growth, negotiate with airlines to open new routes, plan our cold storage and growing import and export future, duty-free shopping, adequate runways, airport systems, etc, and who are versed in employee and consumer relations should be hired immediately to ensure that fiasco’s such as this does not happen.

On further investigations you will find that China Harbor did not stop with some sand and equipment to Movie Towne. The Giftland Group has always maintained that we welcome all competition, once its fair and played on a level playing field, and we are not suggesting that Movie Towne has done anything wrong; however, we have reported to the GRA commissioner, and former finance minister that China Harbor was allegedly illegally using their duty-free status to import building materials and fuel supplies for that project. Many truckers had informed us that fuel brought to the airport was subsequently transported to the MT site; this was also true of other building materials. Had GRA wanted to, this could have been easily verified, just match the duty, vat and other taxes on the MT project, against the contractor’s bill of quantities and ask them to produce the custom entries showing these were paid. If these cannot be produced then it becomes clear that the MT project was built with an unfair advantage either to the Giftland Mall by cheaper construction cost and to GRA by waiver of duties in the amount of billions of dollars of unpaid taxes. The Giftland Mall has paid all duties and taxes on its construction. If this wasn’t done by MT then there is an unfair advantage here. The Giftland Group looks forward under this new administration for this investigation to be conducted. Thank you, Mr President for putting your foot down.

Yours sincerely,

Roy Beepat

Chairman,
Giftland Group