The fog surrounding the Cheddi Jagan expansion project is like the mist which periodically envelops Timehri in the early hours of the morning, shrouding familiar features and obscuring detail. Aside from the troubling questions about the awarding of the contract and the contractor which have been raised over the last three months, the project also seems to be blanketed in muddle. As will be recalled, the whole exercise started off in confusion, with the population learning via the Jamaica Observer, no less, that a contract for the expansion of the airport and runway had been awarded. This had the Government Information Agency scrambling to hurriedly apprise Guyanese that Cabinet had approved a US$138M design and construction contract to China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC) to be funded by China Exim Bank.
And why the clandestine modus operandi? Government officials let it be known that a quick decision had to be taken during the visit of a senior Chinese official to the Caribbean last year. A quick decision on a project of this scale? With funding tied to a Chinese Bank? As we have already commented editorially, aren’t due diligence exercises required in these circumstances, not a cursory read of the proposed contract and an impetuous signing? The impression of undue haste (among other things) was not dispelled when it was revealed that the World Bank had blacklisted CHEC’s parent company since 2009, along with any “firm directly or indirectly controlled by [it].” CHEC wasted no time in publicizing the fact that its parent had inherited a World Bank blacklisting when it took over a company in 2005 that had been sanctioned for a project in the Philippines. There is to be a World Bank review.
And if all that was not harum-scarum sounding enough, there were also the little matters of the government relying on a 12-year old Environmental Impact Assessment, in addition to the new Instrument Landing System installed not very long ago by the Canadians as part of a $700M upgrade. This will now have to be shifted to accommodate the new project. So did nobody consider the possibility of airport expansion when it was erected?
Given the information which has been released so far, one can only conclude that any thought of airport enlargement on the part of the government landed on the Cabinet table at the same time as the senior Chinese official touched down in the Caribbean. Other than that, it is at the very least a case of classic ad hoc decision-making.
As a matter of fact, it is not so many years ago that the airport terminal building was enlarged the first time around. That too says nothing for the administration’s forward planning when a few years later it has to be done again and similar arguments are proffered in defence of the reconstruction, never mind that nothing much has changed since then in terms of visitor arrivals. And it will be remembered on that occasion the construction threatened Aubrey Williams’s murals, for which belated special (less than ideal) arrangements had to be made. The government better not forget again, and allow a Chinese bulldozer to plough its unconcerned way through the nation’s artistic heritage.
But the muddle doesn’t stop there. On Friday we reported that the residents of Timehri North who have been asked to move out in order to accommodate the lengthened runway, knew nothing about a relocation plan for their area until Housing Minister Irfaan Ally mentioned it during a televised debate on NCN. Surely the first people to be informed about such a plan should be the residents themselves, not the entire population of Guyana in an en passant way. We reported the Minister as saying that the government will be going to the inhabitants of the area with the relocation plan, while he told this newspaper that the residents will be contacted about the arrangements.
The Timehri North Development Council (TNDC) which represents the residents was suitably non-plussed. As we reported in our edition on Friday, at a press conference on Thursday, its Chairman, Daniel Fraser, said that moves had been made to regularize the community as far back as 1997, and assurances to this effect had been given as recently as 2003, when house lot numbers were issued. It was Mrs Philomena Sahoye-Shury who in 1997 had started the process, and according to Mr Fraser, land titles had been issued to residents who had been removed from another section of Timehri to the Base Road, Ice House Road and GAC road (now Kali Road). In Timehri North, said Mr Fraser, an occupational survey had been conducted and residents were asked to pool their resources to facilitate the upgrading of facilities and essential services. He was reported as going on to say that even an international community development agency had been called in to assist.
The possibility of extending the runway has been vaguely mentioned for some years, so exactly why as late as 2003, the residents were given assurances of regularization and issued with house lot numbers is a puzzle. Is it a case of one branch of government not knowing what the other one is doing? Or is it just an example of the government suddenly changing direction without working out the consequences of what would be involved, and taking the time to put measures in place to cater for all those consequences? One of those consequences is the matter of the actual number of people who will have to be relocated. The Housing Ministry breezily announced last week that there were 299 houses in the area. (Perhaps that data is twelve years old?) However, as we reported on Friday, the TNDC said there were in fact 336 buildings which accommodated 394 families. In terms of individuals, there were 697 men, 789 women and 878 children, making a total of 2,364. If the Ministry of Housing has its figures wrong at the outset, that is not suggestive of the level of information necessary on which to base decisions.
The residents are also less than pleased about the fact that while they will have to move out, applications for four hotels are under consideration to be located within the airport’s environmental perimeter. Four hotels? Leaving aside the obvious implications in terms of poor versus rich which Mr Nigel Hughes who was at the press conference outlined, one is constrained to ask exactly where the members of cabinet think they are living? Trinidad?
Furthermore, there have been complaints about farming land being damaged by CHEC, which is undertaking preparatory work on the project, and financial losses being suffered by farmers who have been in the area for years. It also appears that certain business entities will be affected by the expansion. There has been not a word from any ministry needless to say, on either of those two subjects. At a minimum, it certainly does not suggest that the government is on top of things.
It might be noted that 2,354 people to be relocated is not a small number, especially if a substantial proportion of families depend on farming for a living. There is no word yet on where they will be resettled, but the Council representing the residents of Timehri North is not holding its collective breath. And so it shouldn’t, given the haphazard way in which this whole project has been approached. We reported on Friday that the TNDC has said that there are no plans to move until the government shows its hand with the resettlement proposals. Given the history of what has gone on, this is simply good sense on their part. It is now up to the government to develop a viable project for relocation – with the emphasis on the word ‘viable’ – that will reassure the residents they are not going to lose out in the process. One wonders if the administration ever included the costs of the resettlement in their calculations for the airport project, since presumably it will have to be borne by the Government of Guyana. Whatever the case, they should recognize that they cannot bully 2,354 people.