Dear Editor,

In a Sunday Stabroek article of June 20, captioned ‘Government looking seriously at ethanol from molasses project,’ President Jagdeo delivering the feature address at the Low Carbon Conference was reported as expressing the need for the planning and standardization of projects executed in Guyana and implied that in their absence engineers seemed to be performing their work in a helter-skelter fashion. To support his observation he stated that the authorities have to spend time digging up under-designed culverts whenever a problem develops and he wondered for example, why a 20-feet wide canal does not have a culvert with a minimum width of say, 10 feet. Hence in the absence of standards, engineers make mis-steps and therefore they need to be re-educated and learn about planning generally to get things right.

During my employment as an engineer with the Government of Guyana’s Ministry of Works and Hydraulics, projects of any significance executed by the ministry were planned, designed and executed according to generally accepted technical standards/codes of practice. The engineer in the execution of his duties was cautioned by the ethical code of the profession not to practise beyond the limits of his personal expertise or to use data that is not known by his first-hand knowledge to be true.

Unfortunately, many in the profession today have become ‘employer dependent,’ and engineers in order to survive have to bend with the wind to get work/jobs/promotions in the public sector, and by doing so compromise their professional integrity. A case in point is the Hope Canal Project where the Ministry of Agriculture (MoA) has approved a less favourable option to be adopted although its consultants had advised that their recommended option would have been the best relief route to site the canal for floodwater from the East Demerara Water Conservancy (EDWC) in terms of capital and outfall channel maintenance costs. The World Bank and many knowledgeable people believe that the completion of this project as proposed by the MoA will not significantly reduce Region’s 4 vulnerability to catastrophic flooding from EDWC.

The President noted that many culverts on canals are undersized, restricting proper flows.

This may well be so, but many of these structures – culverts, sluices, regulators and bridges, etc, were constructed to satisfy design parameters at the time they were built and no doubt many functioned accordingly. Unfortunately some did not. For example, the Land of Canaan Weir on the EDWC was designed to discharge 2000 cusecs under specified conditions which were never met. So the weir has been discharging at under capacity. Many of the sluices along the coast were designed to drain in 24 hours 1½ inches of rainfall over a given area. However, unmanaged regional development over the years now requires these sluices to drain in 24 hours 3 inches of rainfall over the same area, although the conveyance capacity of the sluices and their appurtenances have not been modified to accommodate the changes in the functional dynamics of the systems. As a result, regular flooding of many coastal areas continues during the rainy season because of the poor functioning of under-designed facilities.

For nearly 40 years the Guyana Association of Professional Engineers (GAPE) has been trying to get an Engineering Licensing Bill to certify the professional skill of engineers and to hold them responsible for their conduct passed into law by successive governments, but so far to no avail. If the government is serious about standardization it could get GAPE to prepare technical standards and codes of practice for various forms of engineering activity and safety, make them laws of the land with a system in place to ensure they are complied with. Were it so, accidents such as at the Supemaam Stelling, delays and design errors at the world class swimming pool now under construction at Liliendaal would have been avoided because the engineers involved would have been culpable for their professional work and face strict penalties when they failed to perform.

Finally, the President announced the good news that construction on the Amaila Falls hydroelectric plant will begin before the end of the year and it will be completed within three years. Unfortunately, no pronouncement has been made with respect to the committed sources of financing with its accompanying terms and conditions for the Amaila Falls Hydro Inc (AFHI). The timeframe given for its start of construction and completion seems unrealistic as no statement has been made as yet by AFHI on the status of the design of the project and when bidding documents will be issued.

It is to be noted that the delivery time for special equipment such as turbines and transformers could well be over 2 years. Therefore delivery of electricity from AFHI to coastal areas within three years does not appear achievable, but it is hoped that President Jagdeo if his dreams materialize will be around and be privileged to cut the ribbon to start the turbines at Amaila Falls at the end of 2013.

Yours faithfully,
Charles Sohan