Dear Editor,
It is still incredible to me that I have to keep responding to letters from the PPP which are filled with every sort of distortion, half-truth, untruth and misrepresentation. Their record is there now, starkly exposed, showing a group of the most incompetent politicians in the history of this country, and the falsehoods do not stop. Even former presidents are involved in producing these fabrications. Again I am responding in my private capacity and not as a director of GuySuCo.
The most recent letter from former President Donald Ramotar is a prime example of this distortion ‘GuySuCo needs people at the helm who believe in sugar’ SN, November 14). I want to assure the public that I am not making false accusations; he wrote that my letter said that the Indian Company Walchandnagar had offered to sell parts for the Skeldon factory. What parts could I possibly be talking about? Walchandnagar is a fully accredited sugar factory manufacturer, which told me that they had built 40 turnkey factories like the Skeldon factory before with a through-put of 350 tons cane per hour. The Chinese company he and Mr Jagdeo ended up giving the project to, do not. It is why, confirmed by staff at Skeldon, large components from one part of the factory do not match those in other sections and had to be modified when the factory was being built. More than one time I have relayed this information to the public and only now has Mr Ramotar woken up after slumbering through more than two decades and numerous meetings as a director of GuySuCo to read my accusations.
I maintain that Walchandnagar’s bid for the parts of the factory was the lowest. Since Mr Ramotar was clearly asleep at the GuySuCo board meetings perhaps he is not aware that there were invitations for 4 tenders for the new factory SWR 1, 2, 3, 4. If memory serves and I refuse to research this to respond to the diatribe written by Mr Ramotar. SWR 1 was the contract to actually build the factory, SWR 2 was for the milling and diffuser sections; SWR 3 was for the boiling house and SWR 4 was for the power house and co-generation. Walchandnagar bid on SWR 2,3,4 but did not bid to build the factory, since they alleged that Tate had not given them the geotechnical information which would allow them to build a proper foundation for the factory. Jagdeo then told them that they had two weeks to come up with a price, since the Chinese had already bid with the documents they had been given by GuySuCo but Walchandnagar stuck to their principles and lost the contract.
When lies are repeated often enough people begin to believe them, even those who are in fact the ones lying. On April 7th 2015, the following appeared in KN: “at Skeldon in the 2000s, [Jagdeo] made a strange move. He chose an inexperienced Chinese contractor that had no history of building such a sugar factory over an internationally recognized Indian firm.
“The government had announced that two tenders were received for the Skeldon sugar factory- one from Walchandnagar Industries Limited (WIL), of India, and the other, China National Technical Import and Export Corporation (CNTIC) – which was known more for importing vehicles into China. The decision to go the way of CNTIC was taken by Jagdeo.
“The Indian company’s bid came in US$30M cheaper than that of the Chinese firm. The Chinese exceeded the construction deadline by almost three years, completing the project in 2009.
“The project cost, under the Chinese firm, escalated from US$112M to over US$200M.”
I will not deal with the other misrepresentations, but I will deal with one element of his letter which I have already quoted, to show that Mr Ramotar is a still sleeping and what is worse he thinks that I am too. He said that during the construction process “the board was briefed at every meeting by its consultants and no payments were ever made to the Chinese construction company without clearance from the Booker Tate professionals.”
All of this is very strange in view of the following: on the 23rd day of September 2012 there was filed in the Supreme Court of Demerara, Guyana action number 744/CD between the Guyana Sugar Corporation and the company Booker Tate. I have in my possession the statement of claim of Dr Nanda Gopaul who said that he was Chairman of GuySuCo between January 2009 and December 2011.
In his pleadings Nanda Gopaul alleged the following transgressions were committed by Tate, which he said had warranted among other things that they were skilful and were experts in the provision of management services in the production and manufacture of sugar. But notwithstanding these claims to be experts, they made the following mistakes:
- During the land development programme at Skeldon Tate failed to install any drainage facilities in time, thereby flooding the entire Skeldon cultivation for years and depending only on existing drainage facilities which were woefully inadequate, with disastrous results to Skeldon which lost $468M. And Mr Ramotar slept in the boardroom.
- There were yield losses due to the wrong choice of field layout, ie ridge and furrow rather than the three-bed system conversion system and in the process 855 hectares were so converted and cane and sugar losses in doing this over the 5 years from the time they did this to the date of his pleadings the corporation lost $1.701.6 billion. Mr Ramotar was still sleeping in the boardroom.
Only after a total of 1855 hectares was converted to ridge and furrow rather than the broad bed design it was re-done to the wide bed design which incurred a further loss of $440.7 million. And Mr Ramotar was still sleeping.
- Dr Gopaul alleged that two bridges in the new land development of the Skeldon cultivation were not only badly placed but were badly constructed and to rectify the problem the corporation was forced to spend $27 million. Mr Ramotar slept on.
- An all-weather road constructed by Tate at a cost of 13 million which was supposed to last 5 years lasted less than one year. And still Mr Ramotar slept.
- In the case of the link creek canal, which was supposed to be used to transport cane from the farmers areas to the factory, Tate neglected to install a sluice which the corporation will now have to build at a cost of an extra $60 million.
- In 2008 Tate advised the board to stop the old factory and start using the new factory and according to Dr Gopaul the decision was disastrous the total losses were estimated at US$3,450,000. Mr Ramotar was still sleeping.
- In 2009 Tate again advised that the old factory be taken out of operation and the new factory be put on line; the disaster that resulted according to Gopaul was US$1,568,000. Mr. Ramotar was still sleeping in the board room.
- Tate gave permission for a bore hole well costing $56 million and the project failed costing the corporation US$280,000. Mr Ramotar was still sleeping.
- The new factory was designed to operate at 350 tons cane per hour, but the punt dumper system which was installed by the Chinese under the supervision of Tate was found to be capable of delivering only 299 tons cane per hour. The total loss to GuySuCo so far has been US$175,000. Mr Ramotarwas still sleeping and why should he not? Tate were by his own admission in his letter an excellent and highly professional operation outfit in his assessment.
- More than 400 steam valves approved by Tate were found to be wrong and had to be replaced and also caused losses in the boiling house ‒ a total loss of US$825,000. Still sleeping!
- The diffuser design approved by Tate was not suitable for that purpose resulting in an undisclosed amount of losses. Mr Ramotar was still sleeping.
- Further losses according to this sworn evidence by Nanda Gopaul stated that there were design flaws in the 1. Bagasse Ploughs 2. Evaporator CIP system 3. Shredder motor starting system 4. bagasse conveyors, 5. mill rolls and 6. piping. A loss to the defendant GuySuCo of US$1 million.
- Tate approved the design of the factory without a mud removal system (OC filtre); this had to be rectified by bringing the filtre from the old factory to be installed in the new one. This oversight cost GuySuCo US$825,000. MrRamotar was still sleeping.
These losses in the factory cost the corporation US$8.72M. These are only the losses in the factory; remember that there were losses in the fields as well from what GuySuCo alleged were due to the gross incompetence of Tate. When I say that Walchandnagar wanted a better analysis of the soil on which the factory was to be built. This was the single biggest disaster in the history of this country presided over by the PPP, and I had nothing to do with it. We have to ask those who were sleeping on this board why it happened? This court document was obtained by me before the 2015 election period; it was not given to me by GuySuCo.
I have nothing against the Chinese, and I have never condemned their making large investments in Guyana. But on this one matter I am right; this project was ill conceived and was doomed to failure in view of the loss of the sugar preferential prices which we knew about as early as 2003, even if we did not give the contract to the Chinese to build it, resulting in these disasters. Apparently the people at the KN agree with me.
As far as aquaculture is concerned, I never said that we should abandon 46,000 hectares of cane lands and grow fish. It cannot be done, it would be the largest such operation in any country in the world but 3000 acres can help GuySuCo recover substantially. In 2014 it was estimated that the catch of fish from the wild (sea and rivers) was 80 million tonnes, however the fish grown in aquaculture was 70 million tonnes.
It is the fastest growing industry on this planet and it is our salvation, if we would only take the first real steps. I am not asleep and I have not been wrong yet; we have a perfect field layout, perfect weather, abundant good water and perfect clay soil for growing tilapia, and rather than abandon the cane fields as our labour force dies, as we are doing now, we should diversify to benefit from it. Since he is asleep I don’t expect that he will grasp what I am saying.
Yours faithfully,
Tony Vieira
