Former president Donald Ramotar yesterday denied claims made by the supervising consultant of the Kato Secondary School, Design Construction Services Limited (DCSL), that he and his government pressured them to have the project completed before the 2015 General Elections.
“That is just plain absolute nonsense. I don’t know the contractor or consultant and never had discussions with them. Foolishness. I never had discussions with them,” Ramotar told Stabroek News when contacted.
A damning report of a technical audit, conducted by Rodrigues Architects Limited (RAL), outlining numerous defects uncovered at the $728 million Region 8, Secondary School was on Thursday presented to the National Assembly by the Ministry of Public Infrastructure (MPI) and it outlined a series of structural and other defects
Minister of Public Infrastructure David Patterson, in tabling the report on the school, told the National Assembly that both the contractor and the consultant, in their defence, claimed that they were “pressured by members of the previous administration to complete the work… expeditiously because of the elections period.”
On Wednesday, Patterson’s ministry facilitated an onsite visit of the school, with the representatives of the audit firm RAL. There was ample evidence of poor construction, including unstable safety bars, termite-infested wood, cracked and crumbling concrete floors and walls, steel protruding out of the walls, and faulty installation of equipment in the science lab. The firm’s report has concluded that construction was done poorly in some respects in order to maximize profits.
The school was built at a cost of $728.1 million and the auditing firm has said that at least $144 million would be required to fix the defects. Kares Engineering had won the contract for the construction of the school with a bid of $691,972,139 back in 2013 and a timeframe of two years, from April 21, 2013 was given to have the construction completed.
But Kares Engineering has defended its performance, while accusing the government of making the issue political and not requesting corrections as provided for in the contract. Kares has said that it is a professional company and that does not intertwine its works with politics and it wants to be assessed on its competence and nothing else. It claimed that the school was built to the specifications outlined and even said that the consultants should be held accountable for not objecting to aspects deemed shoddy by the audit team.
Meanwhile, Ramotar said that his government had problems with some defects at the school and it was for that reason that the contractor had not been paid in full up to the time that his government demitted office.
“I never had any meeting with them and whenever I was enquiring of an issue I would speak to my sector minister. I never told her [former minister of education Priya Manickchand] to tell them and I don’t know that she did,” Ramotar asserted.
“I was there one time on a visit and I think questions were raised about the works from what I saw….While we appreciated the effort they made in getting materials there and so on, I know we were not satisfied and Priya spoke many times at Cabinet about it. I can assure you I never told anyone to speed up works for me for any election. Never,” he added.
Efforts to contact Manickchand yesterday proved futile.
The former president said he does not want to assume a reason for the auditor putting such claims in his report, but the fact that the contractor was still owed should serve as evidence that there were defects to be rectified. “I cannot give specifics because it was done through the sector but the fact that he still has outstanding sums would be, in those cases, money that was held back because of the work,” he stated.
Kares is currently still owed $66 million of the contract sum and said that it has supplied recommendations to remedy the situation.
“Kares Engineering is prepared to meet with the Government of Guyana to discuss issues with the building and how they can be resolved… Kares Engineering is prepared to fix defects which should have been identified under the defects liability period and to remedy those that are applicable despite the fact that the liability period has expired,” the company said in a statement on Thursday.
