Barama Company Limited says it will restart the manufacturing of plywood by June, following work to rehabilitate its boiler which was damaged as a result of human error, rendering the plywood plant out of commission for some months.
Speaking to the Guyana Chronicle yesterday, Barama’s Head of Corporate Affairs and Forest Planning, Neil Chand, said that the company aims to have 600 cubic metres of plywood back on the local market by June.
He said that as a result of the breakdown of the boiler and the cessation of operations, the company has suffered losses in the neighbourhood of US$15M.
Barama had laid off 274 employees because of the closure of its only plywood plant. The company had initially said that the closure of the plant could be as long as 20 months.
President Bharrat Jagdeo, addressing laid-off Barama workers at the Guyana International Conference Centre last November,had said he was not satisfied that the company is doing all it can, and it should, to get the boiler operational again to resume work.
He noted that officials of the Government have been tasked with carrying out an independent evaluation.
“If Barama thinks that they will just be cutting wood in Guyana and exporting that wood and not resume the plywood operations, they have another think coming,” he had said while addressing the workers.
The president noted that many of the concessions that Barama received from government were because of the need for large-scale employment for Guyanese. He said too that without  large-scale employment by Barama, then he saw no justification for the granting of the incentives to the company.