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GRANT RESOURCES CAN BE RENEGOTIATED
The government has failed to grasp the essence of the criticisms made against the proposed cost of the repairs to the Arthur Chung Convention Centre. This failing has caused the government to be like Don Quixote and to flay at the imaginary arguments.
The main criticism about the repairs is as follows;
It cost 1.6 billion dollars (US$8 million) to build the Arthur Chung Convention Centre. It makes little sense to be spending US$7 million (1.4 billion Guyana dollars) to be effecting repairs to this structure. Instead of spending such a huge sum on repairing the structure, it is best that a new structure is built, including possibly in a Region where there are no major cultural centres.
The government’s defence is as follows:
a) The money is being provided by China. In other words, the government is saying that the repairs will not cost the government a dime. But that was never the issue. The issue was always about the prudence in spending so much money on repairs when a new structure could have been built for the same sum or less.
b) The government is implying that it has no say in the use of the funds provided by China. This is a most serious contention, because one has to ask whether Guyana is now the Cooperative Republic of China, that because the Chinese government wants to spend money in Guyana, they can tell us how it is to be spent and we have no say in the matter.
The government is saying that the funds are grant funds provided by China. This may well be so, but it was the same APNU+AFC which was able to take some of the laptops which the Chinese were providing free of cost for students and give to teachers, thereby denying more students the possibility of owning their own laptops.
It is much easier to renegotiate grant resources than it is for loan resources which may be made by commercial banks. The government’s contention that the grant was supposed to apply specifically to the repairs does not necessarily mean that it could not have been renegotiated to be used elsewhere.
The government is also insisting that the Arthur Chung Convention Centre is in need of repairs. Judging from the cost of the repairs, it would suggest that there are major structural flaws in the building. The government says that the floor is sinking. Well what a revelation at this stage.
Did the government not know this earlier this year when it hosted the Caricom Heads of Government at the Convention Centre? The government has been renting out the Centre for a number of international conferences. Was it not aware then that there may have been structural flaws to the building?
Why repair the building at a cost of over a billion dollars when you can just pull the whole structure down and put up a better one for the same cost? Why repair a building at such a high cost? Would it not be better to simply build a new structure?
The more the facts of this case become public, the more it cries out for a Commission of Inquiry to determine how this matter should be addressed. The government cannot be serious in telling the public that it is going to allow grant resources to be used in this manner. The money can be put to better use.
By the way, what is the name of the Chinese company that will do the repairs? Or does the government also have no control over this matter?
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