A Guyanese-born Cana-dian businessman who plans to soon start construction of a US$30 million waste recycling facility and with whom Government has inked an MOU has told Stabroek News that his company has so far built only a prototype of a facility similar to what he plans to build here.
And the Ministry of Local Government which signed the MOU with Natural Globe Inc. on Monday could not explain why there was no public procurement call for the facility to be constructed. Efforts to make contact with the Minister of Local Government on this proved futile.
Speaking to this newspaper, Mohammed Osman said that his facility when built and in operation will provide some 500 jobs, most of which will be local. However, the land for the project is still being identified. He is hopeful that Government provides land for the building of a waste management facility and several satellite transfer stations and wants to commence construction of the US$30 million project by January.
“Initially we are looking at 500 plus employees. We want to have more workers from Guyana but initially we will have to bring in engineers, chemists and environmental specialists,” he said. “We will transfer knowledge to the local workforce and for this we will seek to recruit persons coming out of the University of Guyana,” he said.
“Our recycling programme is of a new technology. It will not only take material and process for recycling but also manufacture new material which could be used for purposes such as road construction,” he said.
He said too that the plant will be able to handle several different types of material and would be able to make that material reusable.
He said that everything will be done locally and the material that comes out of the business end of the plant will be meant for local use. He said that only when the local market is satisfied would the material be sent overseas.
“We want to get the public involved…the project is one that is for the whole country,” he said. “We are concerned about the environment and we would be providing bins to households so that they would be able to separate their degradable from their non-degradable waste,” said Osman. Asked whether the company would be asking persons to sort their different kinds of non-degradable waste, he said that it would be too much to ask them to separate the items further. He said that in the initial stages, his company’s workers will be taking on this task. He said that it will take some time to get the Guyanese populace in the habit of sorting waste.
Osman said that the company is still to get the land for the operation. He said that the company has not made a formal application for this and noted that that the MOU with the Ministry marks the beginning of a formalised arrangement with Govern-ment to get the project moving.
“We have not yet made a formal application but we will do so when the land has been properly identified,” he said.
He said that while the company has no operations in the Caribbean per se, they are providing consultancy services for a company in the Dutch island of Aruba and he said that Suriname has expressed an interest in having a similar facility.
“Our project will have a ripple effect,” he said, noting that items and materials that would have been otherwise disposed of in an environmentally unfriendly way would be utilised. “Our first concern is the environment. For the last 20 years all our products have been developed in a way [that is not harmful to the environment],” he said.
He said that while the name of the company has changed from time to time, the entity that he owns has been in business for the last 20 years. Over this period, he said that the company has been doing a lot of research into recycling and waste management and has come up with a patented technology which he would not want to disclose at the moment because of issues of confidentiality.
Ask how it is that this project will generate enough returns on its investment, Osman said that since his facility will be processing many materials and not just one or two he is not worried about the venture being able to make money. “If you decide to recycle one product, you dead…but if you recycle many different materials, they come in every day,” he said.
Searches on the internet revealed no results for a company called Natural Globe Inc.
Speaking to Stabroek News, Permanent Secre-tary of the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development Colin Croal referred this newspaper to Local Government Minister Ganga Persaud when asked whether was a public procurement process or a call for proposals for the facility.
He said that over a period of time a number of firms had sent in proposals and expressions of interest for building and operating such facilities. He said that these expressions of interest went to the Office of the President and the Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment.
Croal said that after considering the expressions of interest, his Ministry compiled them and made a presentation to Cabinet following an evaluation which determined that this company had the best proposal. He said too that Cabinet then gave the go ahead for the inking of an MOU with the company.
He said that an evaluation of this company was followed by a due diligence and it was determined that the company was fit and proper to engage with Government on the setting up of the facility.
Croal said that the fact that an MOU has been signed means that there is now a formal arrangement between the company and the Ministry.
He said that on the basis of this MOU, the Ministry could now go ahead with the arrangements for the project.
According to Croal, the company has requesting three sites on the East Coast and two on the East Bank. There will also be a central location at a site yet to be determined. This central site will house both a recycling and manufacturing facility.
Croal said that the Government is going through the process with the Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission to identify lands suitable for the operation of the plant and its satellite stations on the East Coast and East Bank.
