The President should defer AFHP to the next govt. given questions over Sithe Global in Uganda and Synergy

Sep 05, 2010 Letters

Dear Editor,
I wish to congratulate the Alliance For Change (AFC) for holding informal discussions with the US State Department on the myriad acts of corruption in the Jagdeo administration, with specific focus on the controversial Amaila Falls Hydroelectric Project (AFHP).
If we had a government system with a transparent executive branch, a genuinely independent legislative branch and fully functioning judicial branch, the AFC did not need to lodge its informal complaint in Washington, but the way our system is being run, foreign intervention by invitation from local public figures seems to be the only recourse available to Guyanese seeking justice and transparency from the Government.
And that is why the President’s description of the AFC’s action as ‘unpatriotic’ should be seen in the reverse, because it is the Jagdeo government that has been less than transparent with Guyanese on a project that has raised several questions, starting with who the original builders are, to the awarding of US$15.4M to build a road leading to the generating plant, even though the Guyanese contractor here has no prior road building experience, to the signing for a US$500M Chinese loan for the project, even as the project’s feasibility is still being studied by the IDB, and its report is tentatively due until January 2011.
The lack of transparency surrounding the project, aside, Sithe Global, the contractor identified to build the hydro facility, is currently embroiled in a highly contentious hydro project in Uganda, which is running hundreds of millions of dollars over budget.
With massive cost overruns, poor Ugandans will either be saddled with high electricity costs or the government will have to subsidize consumption costs, which means it will have to make up for this cost by either cutting services or raising costs somewhere else.
Sithe Global, therefore, is not coming to Guyana highly recommended, and so if what the AFC did was ‘unpatriotic’, then what the President is doing is grossly irresponsible and bizarre.
Besides, after the Guyana hydro project is finished, it will be owned/operated for several years by the builders/investors (we await the names of the local investors) until they recoup their investments, then it will be transferred to the state or its delegated agency (GPL).
If ‘investors’ say they spent US$500M or more, they will seek to recoup that money from Guyanese electricity consumers by way of high electricity rates; yet it is the same Guyanese whose money, right now, is being used to build the road to the project, and whose government (relying on public funds) is serving as the guarantor of the Chinese loan.
Is it possible the hydro project is only one of several projects (including public-private partnerships) that Guyanese taxpayers are paying for now so that a ‘chosen few’ can get rich later? We need the hydro project, but not for the enrichment of a few and at high costs to the people.
Mr. Editor, I close by responding to a few of the President’s other relative musings. Like him, the AFC was also elected to serve the people of Guyana, and the aim of the AFC’s Washington visit was not to have the Americans run Guyana, but to alert the international community that gives money to Guyana about the level of government corruption.
Parliament, where he thinks the AFC should have taken its case, continues to be a rubber stamp for the executive branch. And for a President who can throw around numbers pertaining to the AFHP’s projected cost savings, it is amusing he still cannot provide evidence of a single road that Fip Motilall ever built, yet Motilall gets a US$15.4M contract to build a road. Taxpayers cannot afford to lose US$15.4M on an inexperienced road builder, much less US$500M to US$600M on Sithe Global, whose mismanagement resulted in massive cost overruns on the Uganda hydro project has clearly irked the World Bank and Ugandans. So the patriotic, principled and pragmatic thing for this President and his government to do is leave this project for the next government to address.
Emile Mervin

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The President should defer AFHP to the next govt. given questions over Sithe Global in Uganda and Synergy

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