APNU+AFC’s vision to construct a new bridge across the Demerara River was “shovel-ready” at the time of their removal from office. But the installed People’s Progressive Party’s (PPP) government chose to discard all the work and start all over again.
The Alliance for Change (AFC) in a press statement last week said the decision of the PPP Government to terminate contract discussions with the China State Construction Engineering Corporation (CSCECL) raises serious issues of due process, contract evaluation and probity by the administration.
The former Minister of Public Infrastructure David Patterson says that the announcement last Tuesday that the government terminated talks with the Chinese state contractor and moved to the next bidder on the replacement of the Demerara Bridge was suspicious and “requires a proper, detailed and coherent explanation”.
In a statement today, Mr. Patterson said the initial reason given by Vice President Bharrat Jagdeo, that the financing costs were too high is rubbished by their project evaluation process, which their cabinet received and granted in a “no-objection” approval to the Ministry of Public Works to engage CSCECL from November 2021 based on a Design-Build-Finance (DBF) model.
“For the country to believe the Vice President [Jagdeo] now raises questions as to why in November he clearly stated that the financial terms and conditions would be no less favourable than those submitted in the preferred bidder’s price proposal and that the construction cost of US$256.6 million was the lowest among all bidders”, Mr. Patterson said.
Therefore, he said, it was not credible for the sudden termination of negotiations because the financing costs were too high, and he further called on the engineering and financial advisers to speak up on this questionable decision. Mr. Patterson noted the announcement’s proximity to corruption revelations in the recent Vice Media Group interview is also curious and of great concern to the AFC.
It is also no secret there is great suspicion that one of the contracts referenced by the interviewer is the proposed contract with CSCECL, and there is now a strong belief that the two events signal that there was ‘more to the mortar than on the pestle’. Mr. Patterson said openness and transparency were the only solutions to this conundrum facing the Guyanese people, who believe the government’s secretive posture fuels speculations about the continuous lack of honesty and decency within the PPP Administration.
Source: Credible Sources