Latest update April 17th, 2025 8:39 PM
Deadline for $3.6B Hope Canal extended yet again…Courtney Benn granted another chance over delayed sluice works
Government has decided to keep working with Courtney Benn Contracting Services on a critical phase of the delayed $3.6B Hope Canal project. Yesterday, it announced that yet another deadline has been set.
Agri Minister, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy and senior officials updating a Parliamentary Committee on its works yesterday.
Appearing before the Parliamentary Sectoral Committee on Natural Resources yesterday, Agriculture Minister, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy and his team of officials, said that the project is looking for completion in another seven weeks–by the end of September.
The project has been facing one delay after another with the Minister, earlier this month, indicating that a meeting was set to be held with the contractor to decide on the way forward. Issues of penalties and even a possible pulling of the contract had not been ruled out.
Government decided not to pull the project from Courtney Benn after considerations that finding another contractor will take time and cause the entire project to go over budget.
In April 2011, Government announced that it had granted its “no objection” for the construction of a high level sluice outfall at the Atlantic Ocean to drain the Hope Canal, a man-made drainage that would help control the East Demerara Water Conservancy located aback the coastlands.
For the building of a high level sluice outfall at the Atlantic Ocean to drain the channel, a contract for $605.4M was awarded. Another contract for $120.4M was approved for the supervising of the works.
Following the 2005 floods which devastated East Coast Demerara, Government had come up with the canal project after finding that the Mahaica Creek and other outfalls along the East Bank Demerara were not enough to take off the millions of gallons of water that the conservancy holds.
With regards to the sluice contract, the Ministry told Members of Parliament yesterday that the sluice gates, which were outsourced to be constructed, are almost finished. The entire project divided into various sections, including the head regulator, the canal itself and a bridge across the Hope Public Road is about 85 per cent completed.
The project is still within the budget, Ramsammy assured.
Late last year, Ramsammy announced an extended completion date – June 2013. This was shifted to August 31, and later to December 2013. Works were still then uncompleted and the deadline was extended to April 2014 and subsequently to June.
Meanwhile, in terms of strengthening the drainage for especially Demerara, Ramsammy said that the Hope Canal is but part of the bigger picture. While Government has been targeting the Hope Canal as one of the main answers to flooding, preparatory work is also being done to expand the Cunha Canal with the necessary arrangements almost completed for construction works to commence.
Cunha is the third discharge along the East Bank.
That Cunha project is part of Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy adaptation initiative. Works will include the widening of the canal, rehabilitation of the former outlet structure, rerouting the canal to re-establish its original alignment and construction of a bridge on the East Bank of Demerara Public Road where the canal intercepts the road.
The Project Concept Note (PCN) for the Cunha Canal Rehabilitation Project was approved by the GRIF Steering Committee in June of 2012, laying the preparatory work for the development of the full project document and subsequent implementation of the project.
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