Latest update January 1st, 2025 1:00 AM
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Indian Arrival Monument finally completed
Almost three years after construction started on the Indian Arrival Day monument at Palmyra, East Bank Berbice, it has finally been completed.
In early 2017, poor workmanship saw the base collapse.
The Ministry of Public Infrastructure disclosed this weekend that the works have finally been completed.
Last year, several ministers of the government paid a visit to the site where the monument is located on the eastern end of the approach road to the Berbice River Bridge.
The monument collapsed during its construction stage in April 2017 when the foundation weakened, causing the cylindrical structure to crumble to the ground.
The monument at Palmyra has been completed, government says.
Government had raised the issue of the collapsed monument during a visit to India in February 2018.
“We committed to have this monument completed, and in February the government of India offered to have an engineer, architect and sculptor assigned to the project,” Minister of Natural Resources, Raphael Trotman, had noted.
The monument was supposed to be completed last year in time for a year-end visit of the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, to Guyana.
That visit was cancelled.
It will be recalled that a cooperation agreement was signed between the governments of Guyana and India under the previous government.
The statues weigh a whopping 17 tonnes.
After the unexpected collapse of the base of the monument, Cabinet had made the decision that the Ministry of Public Infrastructure would assume responsibility for oversight of the project.
Kudos for talents: The local Guyanese artists, Winslow Craig and Philbert Gajadhar, who created the designs of the Indian Monument, Palmyra, East Berbice.
It was disclosed that the construction of the base represented Phase 2 of the project.
Phase 1 was the construction of the access road – approximately 60 per cent of which has been completed to date by the contractor for this phase – Civil Engineering Works (CEW).
Phase 3 concerns landscaping but works were suspended. BK International was contracted for Phase 3.
It was found that in Phase 1, the budgeted amount was for $43,027,544
The second phase, contracted to Alternate Contracting Enterprise (ACE), was for a budgeted $42,232,239.
The internal monument base was to have been an eight-inch thick reinforced concrete wall and not mortar-filled block work.
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