US$150M CJIA expansion… Passengers fume over smelly toilets

Mar 03, 2019 News

In another few weeks or so, the Chinese contractor for the Timehri airport renovation is expected to hand over the facilities.
Already, the China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC) has scaled back considerably in the size of staff.

The situation in the new Departure washrooms at the CJIA

However, there is more unhappiness not only about what Guyana is getting for US$150M but the quality of work.
On Thursday, there were complaints at the Departure lounge about smells coming from the toilet area.
In the toilet area, there was a broken doorknob that was taped, with parts of the ceiling missing.

The worse was the smell coming from the toilet.
A number of staffers were asked and said that they had raised the issue with CHEC and the airport management. But it seems that it was all for naught.
The sewage smell seems to be coming from pipes, which were buried in the ground and leading from the urinals. It appeared that the pipes are all connected and the smell is simply the backups.
One passenger was Glenn Lall, publisher of Kaieteur News. He said that after passengers complained of the smell, he called management and two senior officials came.
It was explained that the airport is aware of the issue and that the contractor was told several times about it.
The departure lounge is located in the old terminal building which was gutted and renovated after the Coalition Government said it had to modify the designs after it became clear that the contractor was running into money trouble.
The old terminal building had come with major sewage issues and it was the idea to build a brand new one to house arrivals and departures.
It is not clear what CHEC did to deal with the problems inherited in the old terminal building.
What is known is that Government has attempted to defend the modifications, noting that it was able to wrangle some extra work from the contractor.
CHEC had approached the Bharrat Jagdeo government to build the airport.
It helped secure a loan from China’s Ex-Im Bank for over US$130M. The rest of the monies were coming from Government.
The contract with CHEC was for US$138M. It has spanned three administrations and still to be completed.
It included a longer runway to cater for the wide-body jets, a brand new glass covered terminal with escalators, elevators and eight passenger bridges.
However, the Cheddi Jagan International Airport will only be getting four bridges and there is no glass roof.
CHEC, in its contract and cost, had jacked up the prices for material and workmanship by hundreds of percent, in some cases.
Government itself admitted that CHEC erred in starting the runway in the north, but ran in soil issues, wasting millions of US dollars, before being forced to construct the additions in the south.
However, Government did little to sanction the company.
Rather it decided to modify the project, at the cost of the Guyana people.
Guyana still has to pay back that loan that it took for the airport, currently the largest ongoing infrastructural project.

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