Our Government engineers are getting away with murder

Aug 05, 2018 News

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By Leonard Gildarie

On Friday, I sat a press conference with senior officials of the Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI), a state-owned company charged with maintaining and managing the country’s potable water system. The disclosures that came out of it were ambitious, but very possible.
GWI and Guyana Power and Light Inc. have been two companies asking for monies from the public coffers to carry out critical projects. So too had the other company, the Guyana Sugar Corporation.
There is nothing wrong in asking for assistance to carry out capital projects. For example, if you want to move to construct another well or a power station. The problem with all three companies is that their systems have been so weak over time, that it is hard to keep putting the money into the purse when there is a hole at the bottom.
Take GPL for example. Corruption and the need for large sums to replace old transmission lines, create new power stations, bring in smart meters and phase out aging transformers, have all played a role in halting a true march to self-sufficiency.
As a parent, it would be an unthinkable thing to continuously give your kids money, knowing they are blowing it away on marijuana.
All three companies have major problems with their collection systems. In the case of GWI, its customers over the years owed almost $3B. A good chunk of that amount would never be recoverable, as the time to legally collect has passed.
GWI appeared before the regulator, the Public Utilities Commission, earlier this year. It wanted an increase in its rates which were last approved in the mid-2000s. The company was ordered to install thousands of new meters to cut its losses from non-revenue water – water that goes to waste from line losses and theft.
During the engagements with the media Friday, GWI officials were questioned about three wells that were started by the previous management, under the previous administration.
Two of them – at Eccles and at Mon Repos – have failed, because of the casings – the tube material in which the water is brought through, from below the earth.
Apparently, the materials approved for the two wells were no good, leading to structural issues.
The contractor, BK International in its defence, insisted that it worked with the designs it was given. GWI agreed that legally it cannot go after BK.
It is a damning revelation to make. The obvious question to my amateur mind is: how were other countries doing it? Did we wake up one morning and say let us try it this way?
At the end of the day, Guyana lost. And nobody is punished.
We have to spend money now to fix it.
Bad luck seemed to be following BK. As a major contractor, it had won the award for the infamous Supenaam stelling, on the Essequibo coast. The stelling had major issues, ending up costing the country more than half of a billion dollars.
There was little that could be done. BK insisted then, too, that it worked with the designs.
We cannot move forward without looking at the past. Do we have the same engineers? Do they lack the same capacity as before? Have they gone on additional training to hone their skills?
What were their explanations for those design flaws?
No, man, we cannot brush it under the carpet. These are serious issues.
I have my streets in Diamond that are in poor shape. I am sure $1M would help things along to fix the craters. I did fix a couple of holes after begging a contractor for materials and the NDC to bring their workers and equipment.
The point is that our wastage can go to plug another project.
We will not stand by idly and suffer another monster like GuySuCo, where billions were being poured into condensers that blew the money into vapour.
The truth is GuySuCo wasted money running behind grand projects, using the same people who knew very little, over and over again.
Our politicians, lacking the political cojones, refused to do anything to ensure that at least we had a smaller industry that could sustain our workers.
Today, we have an industry that is tottering along, and Guyana desperately looking for an investor.
GWI’s officials admitted Friday that Guyana will have to move to have companies certified to do certain jobs. Fair enough. We also need to ensure our gatekeepers have the necessary firing power to block any invasive attempts of the ramparts.
It is pointless to go through the whole procurement process to ask companies to submit compliance, buy a tender document, fill it out, and have our good evaluators sit for hours wrangling which one is the best company, and then allow the winning one to escape punishment because there is a design flaw.
How many more cases like this that are out there? We may never know.
Consecutive governments have been mum on their punishment (or lack thereof) of contractors and engineers.
We can continue along the same path of non-accountability or we can fix the problem.

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