Dear Editor,
One assumes that the EPA reports to a Minister. If this is so, how then could the agency bypass this supervisory level and communicate (downwards) to the Minister of Public Works? Organisational logic would suggest that the communication should at least be between the Ministers. But then next the question arises as to who is senior, and if one can dictate to the other. This reasoning does not only appear to elude the over-anxious Minister of Public Works, but there is just the insinuation of the latter’s ready acceptance of an advertised project to construct an overhead bridge across the Demerara River could not be considered ‘new’, but a ‘replacement’. This is not about ‘engineering’ or other ‘technical’ context. It is about (elusive) commonsense – that makes the situation so derisible to witnesses, including the several foreign project bidders, and an embarrassment to those locals who are eventually invited to an occasion at which the Minister of Public Works would proudly declare as a ‘Replacement Ceremony’! Is there the essence of collusion in this exchange?
Sincerely,
E.B. John