-repairs in 1998 had been done in six weeks by local company
Barama Company Limited (BCL) may have gotten the perfect excuse when its Land of Canaan boiler exploded to close its factory there and concentrate on its new northwest hub and the prospect of greater and more lucrative log exports.
According to a former executive of the company who preferred to remain anonymous, BCL had previously made attempts to close the operation and according to him the company sought extensive legal advice on the implications that closure of the factory might have on its operations and the deal it had clinched in 1990.
This newspaper made numerous unsuccessful attempts to obtain a comment from BCL last week on this and other contentions; calls to the listed numbers of the company went unanswered.
The former executive said that in 2004 and 2005 the company’s executives approached its lawyers on the issue of closure of the plant. According to him, he was one of a few who opposed the move, noting that the company did not cater for its local employee base and a few hundred persons would have been on the breadline. He said company officials were upset at the opposition to making the move.
He said the recent incident in which the boiler at the company’s operations exploded was “an opportunity” the company was awaiting.
According to the former executive, in 1998 the facility experienced a similar incident in which the boiler at the plant exploded and according to him, the plant did not have a preventative system in place. He said that the operator at the boiler would have a supervisor on the shift, keeping a watch on events there. This had been happening at the plant over the years.
According to him, following the 1998 incident, BCL contracted construction company C Deokie and Sons of Soesdyke, East Bank Demerara to repair the boiler and the repairs were completed within a six-week period. He said he finds the recent timeline for repairs given by the company “incomprehensible”.
This newspaper understands that C Deokie and Sons, with assistance from experts at a bauxite company based in Linden, and utilizing parts from Trinidad and Tobago, completed the repairs to the 15-tonne boiler at Land of Canaan within a two-month timeline.
The boiler at the company operates on an eight-hour basis; initially it ran on a 24-hour operation at the plant but the company over the years had been miniaturizing operations at the plant, the former executive said.
He explained that the boiler provides steam to the driers in the factory which assists in the eventual formation of plywood.
He noted that in the initial years, the plant had a staff of over 1,200 persons more than 85% of them being single-parent Guyanese. The recent employee figure of 274, as well as recent production figures provided by the company goes in tandem with “the plans they had to close that plywood factory”, he said.
Log export market
He said that the company has been eyeing the log export market for years, noting that the venture is more profitable for BCL.
As regards the employee base, the man questioned, “what happen to the foreigners who were working at Land of Canaan, would they be sent home?”
He said that in recent times, the company shifted its operations from the East Bank facility to Buck Hall on the Essequibo River, where in excess of 50% of its employees there are foreigners; a clear breach of the 15% expatriate staff figures it is legally entitled to employ. He said the authorities needed to, “be sterner and keep a closer eye on Barama”.
As regards production figures at the Land of Canaan plywood factory, the former board member noted that the plant initially produced some 10,000 cubic metres of plywood each month; that being the installed capacity. Recent figures (700 cubic metres per month) were an indication of the future plans of the company, he added.
It was revealed that the Buck Hall veneer plant, which was launched as a “slicing veneer”, is actually a “rotary veneer” plant and according to him, the authorities, “did not check the difference in the two operations”. He said too that the granting of work permits to the company’s expatriate employees was an issue the board never got to address, adding that, “even some of the executives at the company right now do not have work permits”.
In the letter columns of Tuesday’s issue of the Stabroek News, environmental advocate Janette Bulkan stated that BCL had been running its Land of Canaan plywood plant at lower levels from its installed mill capacity of 108,000 cubic metres per year. In the last decade the figure sank to 17% of the installed capacity.
As regards the firing of the workers she questioned, “when the Ministry of Labour has been inspecting the plywood plant, did its inspectors not notice that there were no interlocks between the hot and cold sides in the piping system which are surely standard practice or could such safety locks have been overridden?”
Bulkan also made reference to the 274 Guyanese being laid off by the company stating that Clause 11.1 of BCL’s Foreign Direct Investment contract states, “The company shall employ Guyanese workers. In any event the government shall permit the company to employ up to 15 per cent non-Guyanese workers.’
She also asked whether the Government of Guyana checked that management charges levied by BCL’s parent company, Samling Global, with respect to the plywood mill are no longer claimed as tax deductible under Clause 7.5 of BCL’s Foreign Direct Investment contract.
Damage
Stabroek News had reported that the damage at the Land of Canaan plant resulted from the failure of an operator to open a feed water valve. However, Abraham David in a letter which recently appeared in the columns of this newspaper noted that industrial boilers carry built-in safeguards. Minister of Labour Manzoor Nadir when contacted on this issue, offered no comment. He said the company had provided estimates in the vicinity of US$2 million for repairs to remedy the operations in question within a 12-month timeline.
Barama confirmed the lay-off of 274 workers last week following the boiler damage. The company’s confirmation of the lay-offs came in a press release following a news item. Though the boiler incident occurred on October 4, there was no word from the company on it until last week.
In a subsequent press release, the company stated that the incident was caused by “negligence” on the part of trained and experienced personnel. “Their negligence led to the boiler system not being fed with the required water supply and resulted in the over-heating of the system.
This immediately resulted in the entire factory being shutdown,” the company said. The boiler system is considered the “heart of the factory.”
The company stated that it immediately informed all the affected workers, unions, Ministry of Labour, Ministry of Agriculture and the Guyana Forestry Commis-sion about the incident and the findings. The company had said then that the cost to rectify the problem was being assessed by the manufacturer.
