By Joseph Allen
The contractors for the Bamia Primary School in Region 10 have missed a second deadline.
The construction project was given a 20-month lifespan in November of 2021 and was expected to be completed in July of 2023. However, since the contractors were not able to finish the project on time, a new deadline was set based on an explanation and request by the contractor.
The new deadline was given as November 16, and is it stands, the project is not yet ready to be handed over to the Region.
St8ment Investment Inc the company behind the project was controversially awarded the $346 million contract for the construction of the school.
The company, whose principals are Rawle Ferguson and Kerwin Bollers of Hits and Jams Entertainment along with Aubrey ‘Shanghai’ Major and Kashif Muhammed of the Kashif and Shanghai football tournament, was formed just a few months prior to bidding for the project and had no proven construction background.
The project comes under the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development and in July of 2021, the bids were opened. Four companies – Bulkan Timber Works Inc ($349,595,065), St8ment Investment Inc ($346,327,748), Orin’s Supreme Enterprise ($348,726,772), and A Nazir & Son Contracting & General Supplies ($340,549,671) – tendered for the project.
St8ment, with the second-lowest bid, was awarded the contract which was signed by the principals of the company and Region 10 Regional Executive Officer (REO) Dwight John.
Since the beginning of the project and up to its current stage, a large percentage of the money was given to the company to complete the work.
While the construction is a Local Government Ministry Project, the Region 10 Council has oversight and during an interview, Region Ten Chairman, Deron Adams told Stabroek News that the project not being completed has serious implications for the region’s development in relation to the execution of several other projects.
“I believe we have exhausted all options on that project, we have ventilated our views and our disappointment. Over a 100 and something million, we had to save it from going back because had we not written to the Ministry of Finance and asked for an inclusion project, the Government would have then turned around through its propaganda machines, they would have blamed us for sending back money from the region. So, what we had to do was write the Ministry of Finance and request that the fund would now be diverted to several inclusion projects; repairing several schools across the region at Linden Foundation, MacKenzie High, et cetera. This was just to ensure that we spent the monies allocated for this single project,” Adams explained.
The Chairman said that these monies were approved to spearhead several other projects instead of being returned to the Ministry of Finance to be spent in the New Year. And now, with the incompletion of the project, it will now be a rollover project into the New Year. This, he pointed out, will be disadvantageous to the region since other projects will have to be stalled.
“Which is practically denying the region the opportunity to focus on new projects. They will then put back another hundred and something millions of our 2024 budget for that same project to the disadvantage of the region because that money would have been allocated for another project, maybe the construction of another school. So, it kind of affects the region in a big way because when we were supposed to be cutting the ribbon since July, I should say, we are now going to see this project going the entire 2024, I should say”, he said.
“To be honest with you, I don’t see that project finishing till 2025, and that is the most unfortunate thing. And that’s what happens when you give projects to friends, family and favourites, who are inexperienced people who have never built something of this magnitude but you award it because they are aligned with you and completely placed an entire region in this conundrum we have found ourselves in.”
Adams noted that whatever explanation is given now cannot suffice for their inability to do a project.
He further confirmed that a formal letter was written by the company to the council on November 2 and the explanations that were given were the same as when the first deadline was breached. These being the lack of materials, workers and other issues. All issues which contractors across the country face.
Thus far, the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development has been silent on the matter.
