According to President David Granger, Kares Engineering Incorporated, the company which constructed the problem-riddled Kato Secondary School, will no longer receive government contracts.
Speaking on this week’s edition of the Public Interest, Granger said that while his government will be looking to legal measures in place so as to recover from the contractor excess sums spent correcting defects in the building the contractor “certainly is not going to be given any more contracts to do that type of work.”
Describing the situation with the Kato School as one of the “numerous challenges” inherited by the present administration the president said that “there was a big rush prior to elections to finish these projects at any cost to show that the previous administration was doing so well but It is quite clear that the work is substandard and it is unsafe to put children in that building.”
He added that “government will have to bear the burden to make the place safe for use by children” but will do whatever is necessary to rectify the faults in the building since they want to see the children in school.
The president also noted that “people feel that once you are dealing with the hinterland you can do all sorts of shoddy work and nobody will go there to check but things are different now.”
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 last week 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.”
Before tabling the report 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 it does not intertwine its works with politics and it wants to be assessed on its competence and nothing else. It said that the school was built to the specifications outlined and added that the consultants should be held accountable for not objecting to aspects deemed shoddy by the audit team.
Meanwhile, former President Donald 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.
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.
