Deepwater Harbour another venture to cart off millions -Tony Vieira

Apr 29, 2015 News

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Political activist, Tony Vieira says that considering Government’s “unquenchable greed” which

is already “destroying the nation,” the People’s Progressive Party/ Civic (PPP/C) “cannot be trusted with the pursuit” of the deep water harbour project.
The former Member of Parliament insists that it is “another hidden agenda to cart away millions of taxpayers’ monies as is the case with all the other development initiatives the government has pursued.”
Government had announced in mid March of this year that it was going to move ahead with its 2011 plan to have a deep water harbour established. This very harbour is said to be one of the major requirements for the economic viability of the controversial Marriott Hotel. In fact, Prime Minster Samuel Hinds had announced that a preliminary study was already underway at no cost to the Government of Guyana.
The PPP/C had also stated that the Chief Representative of the Overseas Operations of China State Construction Engineering Company Ltd (CSCECL), in the Latin American and Caribbean Region, Zhile (David) Zhang, would be in Guyana to follow up on a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) it entered into with the Government of Guyana. The MoU allows for CSCECL to carry out a preliminary (pre-pre-feasibility) study of a Deep Water Harbour in Guyana in the area of the mouth of the Berbice River and with an associated Development Park/Export Processing Zone.
Vieira has no qualms with this development. In fact, he posits that Guyana “badly” needs it. He stressed however, that his contention has to do with the project being pursued by the PPP/C who he said would only do things with its cronies and friends” in mind.
In one of his recent commentaries on this blog (Tonyvguy.com), he explained, “Everything we buy from abroad costs an estimated 30 percent more in transportation costs, and everything we export “ rice, sugar, bauxite “ also costs more since they have to be transhipped somewhere to the larger ocean going vessels, leaving less foreign exchange for the national purse. This situation is about to become worse since the Panama Canal is currently being expanded to accommodate ships with a draft of 50 ft which is the new standard.”
The agriculture advisor for the A Partnership for National Unity (APNU) said that the PPP/C did not have time to address this important national issue in a most transparent and accountable manner with certain stakeholders because they were too “busy building a Marriott Hotel, a Hopeless Canal, a Skeldon Sugar factory to which they cannot deliver cane, and spending millions of dollars on Guyana Power and Light which does not get better with the expenditure.”
Vieira asserted that those projects give the Guyanese people a false sense of achievement, when in fact “they are just ways to put money into corrupt pockets.”
He recalled that in March 2013, a very large delegation of Brazilians met with a contingent from Guyana to discuss the building of a deep water harbour, a hydroelectric dam and the road from Brazil to the Guyana coast.
He reminded too that during that same period, he had penned a letter to this newspaper saying, “I however hold no delusions that this recent initiative by the Brazilians will finally bear fruit, and at the end of the process, Guyana will be left out and the Brazilians, fed up of begging us for all of the 20 years the PPP has been in office to help them get the  badly needed access to the Atlantic, will take their business and development to Suriname, and Guyana would have lost once more. We have been given an ultimatum; if by June (2013) we don’t agree to this path to certain development, the Brazilians will take their business to Suriname.”
The political activist said that the Brazilians were proposing to spend their dollars in partnership with Guyana for the mutual benefit of both countries.
“It’s not like the Chinese who are lending us money to do non-productive national projects which are riddled with corruption to control us, when the time comes when we owe them too much to pay it back doing these uneconomical projects.
After thinking on the matter for some time, I am convinced that the PPP government does not want these developments with Brazil…If this were to happen, there will be no money to be made on corrupt contracts. With the money which is lent to us by China there is very little accountability,” said Vieira.
On that note, the APNU advisor insists that while the deep water harbour is necessary, Guyana must beware of the PPP/C’s vociferous appetite for the nation’s wealth and those it partners with to ensure that its “corrupt” objective is achieved.

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