BK Int’l condemns Freddie Kissoon publishing rumours in his KN column

Mar 19, 2015 Letters

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DEAR EDITOR,
BK International views with great concern the unfounded and libelous charges made by Mr. Freddie Kissoon in his column published in the Kaieteur News of Sunday March 15, 2015. Mr. Kissoon suggests that BK’s business growth and success are a consequence of his personal friendship with Mr. Jagdeo and not a reflection of his entrepreneurship and the quality of work of the scores of engineering and other professionals; and the hundreds of workers in the employ of BK International.
Mr. Tiwarie has been in business in Guyana for close to forty years and has made many friends on all sides of the political and other divides in Guyana. He is unashamed of his friendships, but his business is run by a team of highly trained and skilled professionals which today includes his own children who have qualified themselves with distinction.
His comment that “You can count on your finger, the private contracts Brian Tiwarie gets. His contracts, thus his wealth, came from the twelve-year reign of Mr. Jagdeo, and he is still getting more under Ramotar” is disingenuous at best. Mr. Kissoon must know that there are no private projects of that scale and magnitude for which BK International is qualified to compete.
BK International bids consistently for public infrastructural projects and while it wins many, it has also lost many to other contractors, local and foreign. Both the Kaieteur News and the Stabroek News regularly publish the table with submitted tenders after the regular Tuesday opening and it is therefore public knowledge what BK has tendered for and at what price.
Editor, BK is surprised that you would allow Mr. Kissoon to not only publish unsubstantiated charges, but to also publish what he admits is rumour and gossip. He says in his column that “This columnist was told an interesting story. A close friend of Bharrat Jagdeo took a bank loan of two billion dollars to buy a quarry. He then got a three-billion-dollar contract from Mr. Jagdeo’s government to supply stone. He instantly paid off the loan. I don’t know if the story is true, but this was what was alleged”.
Certainly someone with the credentials of Freddie Kissoon knows that he should research any such claims and establish the veracity and truthfulness before publishing. Certainly also, you as Editor would not want your paper to be considered a mere rag by publishing spurious rumours picked up on the street.
For the record, Mr. Brian Tiwarie started out as a businessman in the early 1980s, and by 1983 he had established and operated his company B & K Transportation and Construction Services. That early company quickly became owner and operator of the largest fleet of vehicles (road and river) and equipment in Guyana and was working on a number of significant construction jobs.
In 1993 BK International was established as a successor company to B & K Transportation and Construction Services and all other business activities conducted by Mr. Tiwarie. BK International has had considerable success as a construction and also as a diversified entity. The company established subsidiaries including BK Marine, BK Farms and BK Quarries.
The development of BK Quarries is significant in the context of the false charges being levelled by Freddie Kissoon in his column. Mr. Kissoon insinuates that there is some wrongdoing on the part of BK Quarries on the basis of the company obtaining a contract that enabled it to pay off bank debt.
BK will not publicly discuss its private arrangements with its bankers, but notes its ability to secure credit is based on the demonstrated ability to manage its businesses and properly service its debt. BK will however proudly state that when it bought the quarries at Teperu they were in a state of physical disrepair and total financial collapse. Over several decades, the quarries there had changed hands back and forth between the government and various private owners and operators – all of them failed.
When BK acquired the quarry from Mazaruni Granite, the company was able to make the quarry operational in seven days, because BK already had much of the required equipment since the company was already involved in quarry activities in Linden and Omai.
Today the quarry is a successfully operated unit of the BK Group. BK Quarries employs several hundred workers in what is one of the best working environments in Guyana. We have raised the standards of operation to the point where the quarry can be an industrial mining site and an eco-tourism resort at the same time. The operations at the quarry are open to public scrutiny at any time.
The fact that BK Quarries wins contracts to supply stone is a testimony to the complete turnaround of the operations there, its capacity to produce over and above demand, and to be a reliable partner for construction all over Guyana. BK Quarries, today, doubles more than the production of all other quarries combined. The efficiency and volume of its production has also had an impact on both on the availability and the price of aggregate with the price of stone by 30% since we started operations.
Editor, it is believed that the credibility of your publication is marred by this publishing of rumour and unfounded allegations. BK believes in your commitment to truth and fact, and therefore expects that you would cause a retraction of these charges to be published in your paper soonest.
Alex Graham
Tagman Media for BK Group

Editor’s note: There may be innuendoes, but there is nothing more to suggest anything illegal in the dealings of BK International. Mr Kissoon may have taken liberties with the language and as a columnist, was given his way. However, the newspaper does not question the credentials of Mr Tiwarie and his company.

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