Nine years later…High Street building remains a white elephant

Nov 18, 2016 News

More than nine years and after $700M spent, it appears that the High Street building is nowhere near being realized.
The property, located where the former headquarters of the Guyana Broadcasting

The $700M High Street building.

Corporation (GBC) once stood, remains unsafe with technical personnel from Government still deciding on the way forward.
The award of the construction contract was made in 2007 to Kishan Bacchus General Contractors. The new building was supposed to house offices for the Ministry of Labour and the Guyana Forestry Commission.
Questioned yesterday during Government’s post-Cabinet press briefings at the Ministry of the Presidency, Minister of Natural Resources, Raphael Trotman, disclosed that the Ministry of Public Infrastructure is examining how the current building could be used without posing a danger to people’s lives.
He said that the building continues to pose an embarrassment to the past administration of the People’s Progressive Party/Civic.
“Studies show that even if you put tiles on the first floor, the floor is expected to crumble because the support beams were not present,” Trotman said.
According to Trotman, both the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission and the Guyana Forestry Commission (GFC) would have together put over $400Millon into the building’s construction.
The situation is so bad that the “very minimum of persons and furniture would have to be put in the building for it to be used,” Trotman said.
A forensic audit report ordered by Government last year had found that the building involved the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL), the state-owned entity which handles investments. NICIL’s negligence resulted in some $350M in taxpayers’ money being wasted, the forensic audit report said.
In 2012, a Cabinet decision had approved the transfer by sale of the property to the Geology and Mines Commission at a purchase price of $100 million.
It was reported that Kishan Bacchus had operated without bond and owed over $50M for works he did not complete but had received payments.