The government is still awaiting a report from the Health Ministry on investigations into claims that contractor Brian Tiwarie was awarded all of the $800M in steel that was originally assigned to the now frozen specialty hospital project, Minister of State Joseph Harmon said Thursday.
“I can only say that the minister did indicate that an investigation was going on and that we should expect a report on that very soon,” Harmon said on Thursday, when asked for an update on the matter. At the time, he was addressing questions during the weekly post-Cabinet press briefing.
Harmon went as far as to say that it seems as if there was an investigation in the media based on letters that have appeared from the former president Donald Ramotar and Tiwarie himself.
The steel and equipment were seized by the then PPP/C government in a bid to recover monies advanced to former specialty hospital project contractor Surendra Engineering for mobilisation. It was later discovered that Surendra had breached contract stipulations and the Guyana Government then initiated court proceedings against the company for $965M. The company was later dismissed from the project.
Ramotar, in an interview with Stabroek News last month, had said that eight containers of steel that the company had on the wharf were seized and were worth nearly double what BK was owed.
Ramotar, after alleging that the seized goods were awarded to BK, said that he wanted the public to know that his government went to “great lengths” to recover the sums that were advanced to Surendra.
Harmon subsequently said that it was the then government that gave the steel to Tiwari. “It was not as if we gave this steel to anybody. We never did that, this is the information I have. There was never any situation where this steel was collected and then it was given to somebody. This was something done under the PPP administration… I will give a fuller statement on it because there is a certain Permanent Secretary who was in that ministry …that was sent on leave that might have been involved in that process,” he said, while adding that the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Health has been asked to provide government with information on what might have transpired.
Ramotar had said that valuation of the steel and other items in the eight jumbo containers found that the items were worth nearly $800M.
The plan, he said, was to then move to the court and levy on the items as a means of recovering monies deemed lost to Surendra.
“We took it off the wharf and put it at the Ministry of Health…The whole idea was to start proceedings to levy on it so that we could collect back our money. While in that process, the elections came and the government changed and well, we know how that went,” Ramotar said.
“The onus was on the new government to take up where we left off because it was not much more effort that was needed. We did so much… so they should have made sure the process was followed through. Instead, now I understand that they handed the containers over to Tiwarie…so our taxpayers have lost and they need to know why,” he insisted.
Tiwarie, in his defence, subsequently rejected the claims and he accused the former Ramotar administration of grossly mismanaging the project.
Tiwarie said that the containers held steel rods to the value of US$153,000 ($32m) and were sold at public auction held by the courts. BK had sued Surendra for $400M pertaining to foundation work that had been done on the Specialty Hospital site.
“All the containers had were mere steel rods and it was clear that contrary to what was told to the government, none of the expensive steel frames were in the containers. To refresh former President Ramotar on this issue, if he had researched it properly, he would have seen that the estimated cost of the cargo in the containers was approximately US$153,000 and that is consistent with the contents in the containers,” Tiwarie said.
Tiwarie added that BK, having been granted an award against Surendra for works done at the site, could have properly levied on the containers and on assets owned by Surendra but the government had taken possession of the containers and BK did not pursue that route. Instead, he said that the containers were taken to a public auction and were bought by an individual, not BK.
“The amazing omission of the former government was their failure to do elementary homework as to the contents being shipped and to monitor the expenses based on the massive amounts for mobilisation that were paid (by the government) to Surendra. The former government knew fully well that BK was subcontracted to do foundation work and had expended enormous amounts to do piling works and stock materials on site yet proper supervision and monitoring of the project by the government was absent. Huge sums of money were paid over to Surendra and they were allowed to walk away,” Tiwarie said.
