Establish a national building code

Jan 27, 2024 Letters

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Dear Editor,

The purpose of this letter is to deal with a crucial aspect of Budget 2024 as presented in our National Assembly.

The purpose of this letter is to advert to the absurdity of this biggest but certainly not best trillion dollar Budget. The focus of this letter points to a human weakness, an administrative high hurdle which is ascorbic capacity, simply put the inability to cope with a task assigned to you.

A country with a leadership that is enabled or refuses to recognize the relationship between available funds and the ability to have the management skills and prudence to effectively manage those monies is doomed to failure and will be responsible for the wisdom of willful waste brings  woeful want and worst in our present environment opens the door to corruption and greed, the cancer that erodes our cherished values and can only bring pain, suffering and distress to this and succeeding generations.

With due respect to the many brilliant young Engineers, Valuation Officers, Quantity Surveyors, we do not have a sufficient number of experienced professional and technical personnel to effectively monitor and evaluate these many civil works announced in the Budget. This deficiency is not new, even in the days of the Greats, Phillip Alsopp, Steve Narine, Lawrence Charles, Terry Fletcher, Joe Holder, Neville Beardman Thomas, Drayton, P. Semple and many others. With fewer projects they face challenges to ensure that the people receive value for their money.

The inability to match experienced engineers with the many projects announced is manifest, clear for all to see.  Having once held the portfolio of Works, Hydraulics and Supply at the same time, I recognised that even without the abundance of cash available today, the challenge was to have a sufficient cadre of engineers, quantity surveyors and experienced contractors  etc to effectively monitor works being done on roads, bridges, dams, canals and buildings.

Today, we see either shared stupidity or madness with the announcement of vast sums on infrastructure projects in the 2024 Budget. The present Government seems unwilling or unable to learn from their own and other experiences. I can spill pages and pages of examples but for brevity remind us when for a brief period I was Chairman for the Central Housing and Planning Authority (CH&PA) I observed buildings and houses constructed on the East Bank of Demerara during his tenure as Minister responsible for Housing, Irfaan Ali (now President). I discovered houses built with uneven foundations, pillars and steps moving from the main building, twisted walls, leaking roofs and poorly constructed septic tanks. Millions had to be spent on corrected works.

I summoned an Engineer and asked if they conducted soil tests, he answered in the negative and when I pursued the matter, he said they were instructed by a top brass from the Ministry to get on with the construction of the buildings. This represents one aspect only of the stupidity, madness or corruption that represents an attitude of the PPP’s spending of the people’s money.

I avoided the tedium of many glaring examples of Contractors missing deadlines, shoddy work with poor quality materials, but this is not new. Recall the million-dollar building in High Street, south of the Carnegie School of Home of Economics, the never-done International Airport and the many buildings not completed at the times given, where generally you’ve enjoyed good weather throughout the year.

I have avoided giving dozens of examples – at Bamia, Amelia’s Ward, Upper Demerara River; an area identified to ease the burden of travel for eight hundred students was awarded to and hither to an unknown Contractor.  It should have been completed in late 2022 but as I dictate this letter, is still not finished, frustrating the expectations of parents who continue to expend sums to get their children to school far from where they live. Black Bush Polder and in every region of Guyana has examples of poorly executed works and failure to meet set deadlines. Investigative journalists will have a field day going through this list of incomplete and where completed, poorly executed works.

Of course, the capricious off hand manner of awarding Contracts generally is the new pattern of Paternalism by the PPP. This is not new under a PPP administration and for those with short memories, let us not forget the shameful Del Conte Project, where funds were expended to build the road along the East Bank of the Essequibo River from Parika and not one foot of road was ever built and no one was held accountable.

Before dictating this letter, with another senior, we left to visit a family member at the Catholic Home in Vryheid’s Lust. There was road construction extending from the railway embankment to the new public road. No sign stating works are in progress and no public notice. In earlier times, Contractors were required to provide personnel to warn people where to travel so the roadways are accessible. The question, why no notice. The other senior member, not able to walk the distance in, had to forego the intended visit.

I shudder to think what would happen if an ambulance or fire truck was required to come to the assistance of inmates of this home where the majority are unable to walk or move unaided. We see elsewhere lives seem not to matter for this administration. In my time, it would be unthinkable to block a roadway at both ends of a public highway.

For the sake of our country, I plead with the Government to step back with their propaganda blitz, nothing more than an opportunity to open the floodgates for corruption and putting vast sums in the hands of inexperienced persons. The question of taking sums from the National Resources Fund (NRF) and this irresponsible and unnecessary borrowing crusade is another matter.

But Editor and citizens, somewhere hidden in the bosom of the ruling elite there is a grand scheme to deceive when the General Secretary of the PPP, the de facto Officer in command, for reasons which are not obscure states we are not yet a rich country. He is wrong, even with the inadequate revenues from oil, gas, diamonds, etc per capita, we are the richest people in the world, but thanks to the policies, proclivities and propensity of the PPP. Many of our citizens are poor.

Earlier efforts to establish a national building code were all frustrated by this administration. A building code that will provide guidelines for whether you’re building a one-bedroom house or a massive multi-storey edifice with the aid of Guyana Association of Professional Engineers (GAPE), this should be a sine-qua-non before embarking on this spending spree as noted in the 2024 trillion-dollar Budget.

Further, it is ludicrous for Ministers and the President when they visit state-sponsored works to complain about shoddy work, failure to meet deadlines, etc. If as should be, experienced professionally driven persons are assigned to each and every project, this bombast by the President and his Ministers would not be necessary. But dear friends and Guyanese therein is our big problem seen throughout the country since the PPP took office. Their obsession, their priority, their proclivity are propaganda, a technique and trick used by dictators and we see this particularly in areas where they do not have critical control.

You tie a man’s feet and hands, throw him overboard in deep water and the President and his Cabinet colleagues come along with his scriptwriters, cameras and speedboat to pluck you out of the water and declare to the world that you are their Saviour, the new Messiah, I end with a plea that the President and his collaborators listen the voices of reason and concerned Patriots and finally, second to remind him as to wind up this Budget debate while being the fastest growing economy but still borrowing to proceed with massive multibillion projects that you can fool some of the people some of the time but not all of the people all the time.

My friends who worship, say Amen! Amen!

Finally, I ponder why should our Government representing the descendants of our original people, slaves, and indentured, pursue policies inimical to their own self interest and will likely burden and be a millstone around the necks of our children and our grandchildren and when we look at the crumbled roads, hospitals, shortage of drugs and medical personnel, schools without teachers and teaching aides, and what is now a blessing will be a curse.

May the Creator save us from the demons of destruction.

Hamilton Green

Elder

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• Drayton, Joe Holder, Lawrence Charles, Neville Beardman Thomas, P. Semple, Terry Fletcher

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