In the interest of lowering stone prices, Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo earlier this week told contractors in Region Six that government gave out eight new quarry licences, six of which have come into operation.
According to Jagdeo, when his party came into office the price of stone was about $11,000 per ton after which it increased to almost $18,000 in Georgetown. This he said was as a result of “everybody constructing roads, buildings, everything.”
However, his government did not ignore the issue but rather responded by giving “out eight new quarry licences, six now are operational, the price has come down back in Georgetown to about $11,000.”
GuySuCo wharf
The Vice President then divulged that they have since engaged contractors “to land it at GuySuCo wharf for about $12,000 here, right down at the wharf here, so that they can land it at the GuySuCo wharf.”
The wharf is located in Providence, East Bank Berbice, Region Six.
Turning to sand, Jagdeo pointed out that sand prices have seen a noticeable decrease, however government is continuing their work to further lower the price. “We are working to even get the sand prices even lower in this region too because of the massive building programmes…”
Jagdeo also spoke to contractors in Region Six on Tuesday about the “unreasonableness of weighing down vehicles and overloading them”, stressing that some of the roads being built are “community type roads” and not “highway type roads.”
Fines
“There community roads, if you build a highway road that’s of a different standard and even the highways now are under threat from the overloading of these vehicles so we would have to start putting in that programme, the weight restriction programme and some serious fines for people who overload these trucks.”
Jagdeo said that even the GuySuCo trucks transporting sugar are twisting when being operated on the road due to the load, so “at some stage we got to start putting restriction.”
In January, President Irfaan Ali had said that the government will be working to address the shortage of sand in Region Six which was affecting projects. “One of the hindrances that we are working on in this region, I want to address it very early, is the availability and price for sand”, Ali said at the sod- turning for the New Amsterdam General Hospital.
According to Ali, with the pace of infrastructural development in the region one of the challenges posed by the growth in construction is the availability of supplies from time to time.
As such, on the matter of the sand shortage in the region then, Ali had pledged that for the next three to four weeks they will be working on mechanisms on how to address the issue, noting that there will be consultations with the private sector and suppliers. “Within the next three to four weeks we are going to work on some specific mechanism, just like we did for stone, when we came into government there was a big shortage, a global shortage, stone went to $15,000 per tonne”, he said.
With the intervention from the government, the price of stone dropped to between $9,000 to $10,000 per tonne, “and we have to do this for sand in this region, we have to do this for sand so the next three weeks we are working on coming up with some innovative ideas.
“We are going to meet with the private sector, (and) the suppliers to see how we can work on deploying the assets of the government to ensure that we bring some sort of normalcy to the situation here that is driven up quickly with the expansion that is taking place”, he said.
Stabroek News was told that Ali late last year met with contractors of Region Six who were behind on projects where the issue of a shortage of some supplies was highlighted.
Meanwhile, contractors within Region Six yesterday told this newspaper that presently there is no shortage of sand.
