Rehabilitation of the controversial building at High and Princes streets, Werk-en-Rust, Georgetown has been ongoing for a year. However, efforts by Stabroek News to contact Minister of Natural Resources Vickram Bharrat for an update on the current status of the rehabilitation and costs have proven futile.
Stabroek News understands that the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC), which was identified to occupy the building, commenced its retrofitting in the latter half of 2022. There had been no prior announcement and the relevant authorities have remained tightlipped on the total cost for the remedial work.
Bharrat, responding to questions from this publication on the sidelines of the 2023 International Energy Conference, had said that the current PPP/C government was following through with a cabinet decision from 2012. That decision was that the GGMC would be occupying the building because it had outgrown its Brickdam, Georgetown office and was renting facilities throughout the city to house its departments.
“The building is being completed now by GGMC for GGMC. This [new] building is large and has good enough space,” Bharrat had said. The subject minister stated that the Guyana Gold Board will also be housed on the property, considering its size. He clarified that the goal was to consolidate all of the GGMC’s services into one area.
The building has been mired in controversy ever since it was first constructed for the government in 2008 at a cost then of $600 million. A number of construction issues prevented it from ever being occupied. Then the Ministry of Labour, which had offices across the city, was originally identified to occupy the 65,000 sq ft building. Interior finishes and general painting were among the last tasks to be performed, according to a former construction worker, who had said that the building was more than 70% finished when work stopped.
“I know we heard a whole host of comments about white elephant and waste of money,” Bharrat had said, “but the building is structurally sound because we did all of that test…” He further explained, “The flooring is [replaced with a] steel flooring. One of the issues people had, was the design in which it was casted there wasn’t much beam or post. I was told by the engineer it wasn’t a mistake, it was a design that we are not accustomed to seeing…” He added that they had to retrofit the ceiling because when the channels and conduits for the air-conditioning were installed there was little headspace between the floor and ceiling.
In 2013, a public source claimed that the building’s foundation was made of substandard material and that Kishan Bacchus Construction Company, the contractor, had completed work on the foundation and inside the structure that went beyond the specifications in the contract. It was also revealed that the building’s ceiling was poorly built, had limited vertical space for the installation of roofing and air vents and which necessitated their adjustments. Kishan Bacchus Construction Company was able to obtain the contract only after the project’s original contractor withdrew.
The construction of the complex, on a plot of land that housed the former Guyana Broadcasting Corporation, was halted in the first quarter of 2011, three years after it had commenced. It was agreed by the authorities then that the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) would be housed in the facility, and the organization was scheduled to move into the complex in September 2010. This never happened and GRA later moved into the former CLICO building on Camp Street.
The High and Princes streets project was placed on hold in 2014 following cabinet’s announcement that GGMC would occupy the building, after there was an initial disagreement about who would get the contract to finish it. A source had told this newspaper that there were a lot of objections when the GGMC awarded the contract to a business associated with the Kishan Bacchus Construction Company. The GGMC Board decided to pause the contract and reevaluate it in response to several objections.
According to a forensic audit conducted into the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL), the building’s development cost $350 million. NICIL’s former Executive Director Winston Brassington had subsequently stated that no law was broken in the entity’s funding of the ill-fated project. The funding for the project was approved at the parliamentary level.
Rickford Vieira, a former commissioner of the GGMC, in August 2015, had told this publication that no decision had been taken on the building. A delegation led by David Patterson, then Minister of Public Infrastructure, had visited and examined the building following the APNU+AFC coalition’s assumption to office in 2015. The ministry began looking at measures to make the complex safe for occupation, former Natural Resources Minister Raphael Trotman, had stated in 2016. Trotman had said that the structure “stands out as an embarrassment” for the past PPP/C administration because over $700 million was spent and the building was no closer to being occupied. He said the Guyana Forestry Commission and the GGMC had together put over $400 million into the building, with an expectation that they would be able to occupy it. The APNU+AFC administration then declared in January 2017 that the Ministry of Social Protection would move all of its offices to that facility in 2018 and would invest more than $1 billion in the building’s restoration. In June 2017, the Ministry of Social Protection issued a call for bids for eligible contractors for the completion of the administrative building, expected to cost $750 million, and the construction of the driveway, parking area, and revetments, which had an additional estimated cost of $130 million. It is unclear what happened as no work was undertaken at that time.
