Latest update April 6th, 2025 12:03 AM
Oct 13, 2013 Editorial
Certainly the most talked about thing at this time is the Amaila Falls project. For the first time we are seeing so many challenges to what the nation originally took for granted. It also exposed the extent to which the government went to ignore legitimate queries from the people who must pay for all these things.
Today, the Amaila Falls is bone dry, casting doubts about the feasibility of the hydroelectric project.
From as far back as 1999 there was talk about this new hydroelectric project. There were meetings in Prime Minister Sam Hinds’s office with the then proposers of the project. Ever since then there was controversy. Fip Motilall came with a proposal to construct the hydroelectric project and to sell the current to the Guyana Government.
The project sounded good because Motilall promised to bring in all the necessary funding. In 2001 he returned with some supposed Canadian financiers and once more the government seemed inclined to support the project. On the basis of his plans the government sold him the rights to the project which should have delivered power by 2005.
That Mr Motilall sold his rights to Sithe Global to continue the project is not in the interest of the public. What is of interest is the fact that Guyana now seems to be saddled with the cost of the project. This fact is the major bone of contention. The government must support large loans to the point that the taxpayers would be responsible for the lifetime of their grandchildren and probably, their great grandchildren.
Meanwhile Motilall is about US$10 million richer for merely selling a national asset to a foreign entity. The Guyana Government gave Motilall something for nothing and must now pay Motilall for that which it gave away. The argument may be that Sithe Global is paying Motilall but Sithe Global is affixing that payment cost to its bill to the government.
But the government went even further to indebt the nation to Motilall. In fact, this is even worse than paying for what it once gave away. It awarded a road building contract to Motilall despite the pleas and admonitions of the nation. Motilall had no road-building experience but people like Winston Brassington insisted that Motilall was qualified and that he could finish the work at a cost of US$15.4 million.
We now see that the road is going to cost twice as much; that Motilall was overpaid; and that long after his agreed completion date he finished a mere 28 per cent of the work. The added money now being spent to complete the road is being added to the project cost. The taxpayers must pay for a decision that Brassington and the administration took, knowing that it was a reckless decision.
There is another thing that seems to be a worrying factor; each day the project is becoming more expensive. But that need not have been the case. If the contractors were serious then they should have already signed on and the project cost would have been fixed.
But there is more to all this. If Sithe Global is bent on having the project and the Chinese are willing to make the money available then why should Guyana have to pay risk insurance? They are the people taking the risk and should be responsible for any such cost. Instead, this insurance is being affixed to the cost of the project and the taxpayers must bear it.
It goes without saying that the nation needs hydro power but what the nation seems not ready to accept is the cost burden. The cost without all the trimmings, some contrived by the government and the perceived desire to help friends and comrades as was the case of Fip Motilall and the road contract, then the project would have been much cheaper.
And it is the cost that had people complaining. Now they have another look at the project, one that the government never presented to the people—a hydro project without water.
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