As the city moves towards implementing a paid parking system, concerns have been renewed about the company contracted for the project and the new face leading the initiative.
“The duplicity which surrounds this contract seems to be increasing every day,” Deputy Mayor Sherod Duncan, who has been a vocal opponent of the contract, told Stabroek News last evening.
His frustrations come in wake of the announcement that Ifa Kamau Cush, the Director of National Parking Systems/Smart City Solutions (NPS/SCS), was no longer associated with the project, which is now being spearheaded by Amir Oren.
Oren is Managing Director of Business Development for SCS and will be representing the interest of the contractor.
Duncan said it is very strange that Cush, who waited 19 years to actualise the project, is now summarily out and there is a new person to deal with.
“Cush presented himself to the council as a representative of NPS and Simon Moshesvilli as representative of SCS. Now, a few months later, they have both disappeared and a new person, Amir Oren, is being introduced. This is very strange,” he noted.
The Deputy Mayor is frightened that this project, which was never tendered, may soon escalate to a level where City Hall no longer recognises the contract or the contractors and all the warnings of a Ministry of Finance (MoF) review will be realised.
“The MoF warned that a foreign company may use this contract as a back door into our economy and it seems like that is happening. It is past time the central government intervenes and has this contract withdrawn as recommended by the MoF. If the project had been tendered, we wouldn’t have all these problems. We would know that a real company, which had submitted a proposal that was deemed best had been awarded the contract. SCS is only a company on paper; it is a figment of somebody’s imagination, nothing more,” Duncan lamented.
Duncan’s concerns are shared by several members of the private sector.
Oren yesterday met with the Private Sector Commission and though that body has declined to comment on his presentation until all 30 of its council members are briefed, Stabroek News understands that its members are not impressed by the appearance of the new director.
“We don’t think a lot of this man and this project,” one member, who asked not to be named, said.
“Who is this guy? He has said that Cush is no longer employed and made a lot of derogatory comments about him yet he is supposedly a Russian, who lives in America and claims to be director of company which nobody knows about. That’s not good enough,” he added.
Stabroek News has been told by Public Relations Consultant for NPS/SCS Kit Nascimento that SCS is a special purpose company and Oren is the major investor representing a Mexican company that has taken over NPS/SCS.
This consortium, headed by Oren, who has a “background in finance,” is also, according to Nascimento, responsible for installing parking meters in Mexico, Panama and Peru. The Guyana system is to be its first Caribbean project.
The consortium became involved in Georgetown’s parking meter project after Cush approached the French manufacturers of parking meters for assistance in actualising the contract he had signed with City Hall.
In an interview with Nascimento, Oren explained that Cush approached the manufacturer, which recommended his company, which has been installing parking systems for 25 years.
“We were brought on after the contract was baked but the element that was missing was a feasibility study…neither the city nor the existing contractor had the resources to conduct a proper feasibility study: the mapping, traffic counts, etc. We know that Georgetown was viable but it wasn’t quantified neither from the concessionaire, at the time NPS, nor from the city. We were happy to be involved but before we committed the capital we wanted to be formalised into the contract and we wanted for the contract to have the flexibility to incorporate the findings of the study,” Oren explained.
