Ramjattan’s offer to help retrieve US$$M from Surendra “rejected”

Sep 26, 2014 News

By Abena Rockcliffe
“Ramjattan is bigging himself up more that he really is,” said General Secretary of the People’s Progressive Party, Clement Rohee as he rejected his former Party colleague’s offer to help the government retrieve US$ 4.5M from Surendra Engineering.
Following the administration’s yanking of the contract to construct the controversial Specialty Hospital from Surendra Engineering, on a call of fraud, Leader of the Alliance for Change (AFC), Khemraj Ramjattan told the media that his Party was in a position to help government retrieve the millions it had already given to the construction company.
He said that notwithstanding the fact that the government totally ignored the opposition’s calls and warnings on the Surendra/Specialty issue, the AFC is still prepared to help the government recover its money.
Ramjattan told the media, “We (the AFC) are in a position today to help the government of Guyana and we are willing to help them to get back that US 4.5 million from Surendra.”
The politician said that he spoke to political figures in India who have indicated that there are two sources Guyana can turn to for help on the issue, those being the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) and parallel organization Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI).
He said that those are entities where one can go and make complaints against big companies that have done damage financially, and these bodies will in turn do the necessaries.
“So if it (Surendra) has taken away $4.5B from the Guyanese, we can help, and we can utilize these processes to ensure we get back from Surendra,” said Ramjattan.
Further, the politician noted that neither he nor his Party have faith that the government will move to the Courts to get back its money from Surendra.
“It is just a sham and a façade and they have worked it out how they will get their commissions. I understand the commissions have already been paid to senior government officials, and so now that the money has been blocked they have yanked themselves from each other in that symbiotic relationship they had before.”
But Rohee in response to this said, “He (Ramjattan) is setting himself up as a broker between the Indian Government and the Government of Guyana. The Government of Guyana has bilateral agreements with the Government of India and the government of Guyana through the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has extremely good relations with the Indian High Commission in Guyana.”
With that being said, Rohee asserted that for Ramjattan to “insert” himself as a broker between the Indian Government and the Government of Guyana “….on a matter that is of a bilateral nature, I think it is being rather intrusive and presumptuous on his part and he is bigging himself up too much out of proportion. I think he should stay where he is; keep to his legal profession.”
Rohee told the media that the matter is “a little more complicated than it looks on the surface.”
Recently the government scrapped Surendra’s contract on a call of fraud, saying that the company submitted forged documents. Before this, the Opposition was all against Surendra getting the contract.
Ramjattan had told the media that while Fedders Lloyd had constructed some 40 specialty hospitals across the world, Surendra Engineering, a spare parts fabricator for the sugar mills of India, had never constructed any.
The National Assembly denied financing for the Specialty Hospital because of these very reasons.

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