GRA should withdraw from the deal with Bai Shan Lin

Nov 09, 2013 Letters

DEAR EDITOR,
The deal by which the Chinese conglomerate Bai Shan Lin (BSL) is building a car-park for the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) reeks of impropriety and should be terminated. The incident is yet another revealing glimpse into the ethical confusion around so much of upper eschelon decision-making in Guyana.
Much of the background to the GRA occupancy of its new premises is puzzling. What, in the first place, possessed the GRA to rent an apartment building reportedly for some G$10 million per month that also required G$227 million to convert into an office block and has no parking space. Given that the building was rented from the NIS, which inherited it as a result of what proved to be reckless investment in the failed Trinidadian financial conglomerate Clico, the answer to that question would seem to involve further murkiness.
Apart from the fact that all of this is tax-payers’ money, public interest arises from the problems created by an almost permanent traffic jam over a four-block area throughout the working day, creating a general nightmare for vehicles and pedestrians.
The parking issue wasn’t an oversight. GRA, by its own estimates of staff and customers with vehicles, requires over 500 parking spaces on a daily basis. Moreover, six months ago the Ministry of Works informed the public that the Government had scrapped plans for the Guyana Revenue Authority to use the Lamaha Reserve as a car park. Which gives rise to a second question.
In one of his statements the Commissioner claims that Bai Shan Lin was building the car-park for GRA, as if GRA still had a lien on the Reserve. Later it seemed as if GRA was renting the space from Bai Shan Lin. What is the background to the decisions both with respect to the GRA and the renting of the Reserve to private businessmen and who exactly are they to be so privileged?
The third question is what provoked the current solution, namely returning to the Lamaha Reserve as clients of a chinese conglomerate, six months after it seems to have been on offer to GRA directly.
It should be pointed out in GRA’s favour that they attempted to get the cooperation of City Hall to convert the median down Waterloo Street into parking spaces. This would be a good environmental move in a number of city streets if the trench were first palled-off to prevent erosion. Unfortunately, City Hall remains in a coma.
Sifting through the Commissioner of Inland Revenue’s various and varying statements about the exact nature of the deal between the GRA and BSL, it is clear that the GRA was benefitting in some shape or form from BSL in a manner that went beyond a normal commercial arrangement.
References to being ‘good corporate citizens’ and ‘giving back for the benefits they received for their investments’ all point in this direction.
Bai Shan Lin, in the short time they have been operating in Guyana, have shown themselves to be anything but good corporate citizens in Region 10, and it is disturbing to learn they are expanding their interests into construction. This company left Suriname under questionable circumstances.
The environmental record of Chinese companies globally is appalling. Yet, despite knowing all of this, BSL has put together a one million hectare timber and mining concession in an area only accessible by a road the company itself is now constructing. Rather than cozying up to companies of this nature, the GRA should be keeping them at arms’ length and under strict surveillance.
Georgetown, once the ‘Garden City’ of the Caribbean, is now paying the price, as has been pointed out frequently, for the free-for-all in the construction and property sectors, massive violation of building regulations, blocking of drains and collapsing sewers, and unlimited importation of vehicles.
The respective Ministries appear to be under no pressure to account for their part in this situation and the more ruthless among the business sector appear to be the ultimate beneficiaries.
If the GRA is actually the victim of pressures of one kind or another with respect to the fiasco surrounding their new building and the car-park, the Commissioner would do a considerable public service by making clear the true state of affairs.
Executive Committee
Guyana Human Rights Association

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GRA should withdraw from the deal with Bai Shan Lin

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