So after some delay the first batch of road building equipment for Amaila Falls road project has arrived and work is expected to begin soon.
According to Minister of Transport and Hydraulics, Robeson Benn the tug, Muheet, and barge CIA-204, had experienced some delays in Miami in the United States as the insurers there had to ensure their sea worthiness, as the vessels were undertaking their maiden voyage. The appearance of tropical depression Colin over Florida waters also inhibited departure.
He also said the contractor Synergy Holdings Inc. has indicated that this first shipment includes three front-end loaders, four excavators, four dump trucks, two bull- dozers and one scraper. These pieces of equipment will be used for the cleaning and sub grade preparation of the road, the Minister said.
Benn indicated that the standard finishing equipment for the completion of the road would be shipped in due course.
Chief Engineer, Ministry of Public Works and Communication, Walter Willis, said that as early as today, a team of engineers would be dispatched to the Linden Yard site, to check the equipment in order to establish their readiness for the project. Willis said that the contactor requested a piece of land 26 miles unto the Mabura road to be used as a launching area for the project’s equipment.
He reiterated that of the four bids that were submitted for the project, the evaluation team considered that Synergy had the best bid in terms of price and execution.
So preparatory work will now begin on what would be the largest project ever to be undertaken in Guyana and this should be welcome news for all Guyanese because we are now moving towards making hydroelectricity, which was a dream a very long time ago, become a reality.
However, most unfortunate and disconcerting is the fact that there are a few in our midst who are continuing with their wild speculations and negativity about the project. And in particular one media house has been making it a special feature, on an almost daily basis, to tarnish the contractor for the road project and to create the impression that there was something irregular about the award of the contract.
Some of these news reports border on a vendetta against the contractor and gives the impression that someone from the media house has some grouse against Mr. Makeshwar Motilall.
If this media house has valid information that in the awarding of the contract tender procedures and regulations or any other illegality took place then it should make them public, instead of baselessly nagging about the contract.
Mr. Motilall did not appear from nowhere and therefore he is not a mystery. Since 2002 he came to Guyana and expressed his interest in building a hydropower station in Guyana and provided a detailed plan for the project on which the environmental impact assessment (EIA) was done. However, for various reasons the project did not materialise at that time.
What is mind boggling is why this media house did not raise all these “ants nests” about Mr. Motilall then as it is so persistently doing now.
In fact, Mr. Motilall had this ambition to bring hydropower to Guyana since he was a student at Queen’s College in the late 1970s. He was prompted by the failure of the Upper Mazaruni hydro project which was touted to be the one that would transform Guyana industrially and economically.
The then government even used the hydro project as a diversion to not paying a minimum wage of $14 per day which the trade unions were clamouring for. At a GTUC May Day rally in 1980, Mr. L.F.S Burnham, then Prime Minister asked the question: “Do you want $14 or hydro? In the end they got neither of the two, with billions of dollars going down the drain. Had that hydro project fructified then some would not have been wasting energy quibbling about whether a contractor has the capacity or if his tender was the best.
What is paramount is that Guyana needs a hydropower facility because it is a renewable source of energy, environmentally friendly and in the long term will provide a cheaper and more efficient supply of energy. In this way its manufacturing industries could become competitive on the international market.