In time it may become one of the most important arteries ever built in the country’s history but today the road to the proposed Amaila Falls Hydropower Project serves little purpose while its maintenance could cost at least $200m annually, according to Public Works Minister Robeson Benn at his press conference on Friday to review 2014.
This unsatisfactory state of affairs underlines key characteristics of PPP/C governments since 1992 -poor governance and planning. The missteps have less to do with the actual nuts and bolts of planning and everything to do with the obstinacy of a leader intent on steamrollering projects through no matter the risks. This was the legacy of President Jagdeo who yearned to be hailed for transforming Guyana and would let nothing stand in his way even common sense. While inspirational leadership has throughout history created revolutionary change on a wing and a prayer it still requires elementary planning and a rational mind. The maintenance cost for a road still without a purpose wasn’t the only misstep in this project, neither was this the only project that suffered horribly in terms of sequencing and execution.
For a massive undertaking that included the upgrading of approximately 85 km of existing roadway, the design and construction of approximately 110 km of virgin roadway through forests and the design and construction of two new pontoon crossings at the Essequibo and Kuribrong rivers, through vastly differing terrains and unforgiving weather, the government’s questionable procurement procedures yielded a contractor who should never have worked on this project. The dismissal of this contractor, the subsequent subdividing of the work among several contractors – some of whom were unable to do the job – and poor weather saw a contract which was originally estimated at US$15.4m ballooning to at least US$41m.
This is a scandal of enormous proportions which would have seen the top decision makers having to quit government for these costly blunders attached to a venture that should already have been completed. To make matters worse, a road that will take at least US$1m to maintain each year has terminated at a site that is at least three or four years away from delivering its ambitious promise of cheap hydropower being seamlessly supplied to the coast and efficiently distributed by the troubled utility company. That is the promise and one besieged by imponderables and risks that haven’t been adequately calculated. For not making the required compromises in Parliament and having the project collapse, the government would have fallen over this particular issue. Needless to say, the longer President Ramotar prevaricates over naming a date for general elections the more distant this project and its key assumptions grow, particularly in light of the astonishing drop in oil prices.
The loss to the economy from this poorly executed project and the ridiculousness of having to maintain a road while awaiting a suitor cannot be afforded. One hopes that the government that emerges from new elections can swiftly take expert advice, resuscitate the hydropower project and deliver.
The Amaila fiasco is not unique to the Jagdeo/Ramotar administrations. The Skeldon Sugar Modernisation Project is another boondoggle whose disasters unfold daily before the eyes of the public and is a crisis that will immediately test a new administration. Construction of the factory was completed even before an adequate amount of cane was available to feed it, the choice of the Chinese contractor was clearly flawed, the factory has never been able to grind the promised 350 tonnes of cane per hour or produce 110,000 tonnes of sugar per annum, expensive remedial work has had to be done and sugar is being made at an exorbitant cost when this facility was ironically intended to vastly lower this figure across the industry. This is yet another example of reckless, uniformed and opaque planning like that for the Amaila project and former President Jagdeo is the person who should answer.
Other horrendous examples of costly planning failures exist. The fibre optic cable from Brazil being a more recent example. For all these disastrous projects, the government shows no inclination to mend its depraved ways. It has steadfastly refused to establish the Public Procurement Commission, it is unwilling to be transparent in major awards of public contracts such as for drug supplies to the country and it continues in various ways to help favoured bidders such as the Indian firm Surendra, culminating in yet another fiasco at the Specialty Hospital project.
While these schemes are no doubt from the playbook of former President Jagdeo, history will attribute their actual failures to President Ramotar and his supine outlook while entrusted with onerous responsibilities. Again, none of these disasters can be gainfully untangled until the President clears the path for general elections and a new administration takes office.
