Dear Editor,
In response to my letter in SN on April 16, regarding the acquisition and placement of steel sheet piling (SSP) around his property in Lodge, Elder Hamilton Green, a Minister in the former PNC Government under the late President Burnham, claimed that the information I gave therein was unfounded and a distortion and total untruth. He further demanded an apology for the facts which I presented therein since he claimed they were an unwarranted assault on his character.
I would like to elaborate on the information I presented in my letter of April 16 and dispel the rebuttal Elder Green expounded in his letter. The SSP installed on his property were not cut-off discarded SSP ends from an East Coast Sea Defense Project. They were new SSP imported from England thru’ the Crown Agent for primary use on Guyana’s Sea and River Defense and stockpiled in 24 feet lengths at the Ministry of Works and Hydraulics (MWH) wharfage adjoining the MWH Hydrographic Boat House at Kingston.
At the wharfage, MWH workers used oxyacetylene equipment to cut the 24 feet long SSP into 8 feet lengths, loaded them onto MWH trucks and transported them to Elder Green’s house lot in Lodge. There, MWH workers used them to construct a SSP paal-off around Elder Green’s house lot. A section of the paal-off around his property can be seen today from upper D’urban Street.
SSP is a heavy and complex construction material and it requires more than a few workers and household equipment to install as they have inter-locking grooves to join them together and these have to be accurately aligned and meshed to ensure they are properly secured before they are driven into their intended location. Elder Green however, claimed that the professionally installed SSP paal-off on his property was constructed by laid-off MWH workers under the supervision of a retired MWH Overseer. It is inconceivable that an unemployed and retired labour force lacking the desired experience could have done such a professional construction job on his paal-off but Elder Green staunchly claimed that they were able to do so.
Sincerely,
Charles Sohan
