While the contractors for the Bamia Primary School in Region 10 have missed several deadlines since 2021, this project was not flagged or documented in the 2022 Auditor General’s (AG) report.
There was no mention of the Bamia Primary School under the Ministry of Local Government which launched the project in November 2021 or Region 10 which has been exercising some oversight of it.
This AG’s report was tabled on December 11, 2023 during the 69th sitting of the National Assembly which was held at the Arthur Chung Conference Centre, Liliendaal (Greater, Georgetown).
Stabroek News on December 4th, 2023 reported that 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, 2023, and as it stands, the project is not yet ready to be handed over to the Administrative 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 before bidding for the project and had no proven construction background.
That in itself should have been a subject of continuing comment by the Auditor General’s Report.
The Auditor General’s Report has been criticized in the past for leaving out controversial projects and focusing on many trivial and immaterial matters.
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.
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 regarding 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 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, and they would have blamed us for sending back money from the region”, Adams explained on December 4.
He continued “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, etcetera. This was just to ensure that we spent the monies allocated for this single project”.
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 this year (2024).
And now, with the incompletion of the project, it will be a rollover this year and Adams lamented that this 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 in July, I should say, we are now going to see this project going the entire 2024, I should say”, the Regional Chairman highlighted.
“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,” he told this publication last year December.
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, 2023, and the explanations that were given were the same as when the first deadline was breached. These are 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 tightlipped on the matter.
