APNU/AFC shamelessly boasts about projects inherited from the PPP

By: Dr. LESLIE RAMSAMMY

It is jarring listening to David Granger and his shameless APNU/AFC colleagues boast about projects which were started or were designed before May 2015, projects with major PPP footprints. Before May 2015, APNU/AFC denounced these projects as far too costly, not needed and only embarked on to provide PPP-friendly contractors with get-rich-quick opportunities.

In fact, they screamed in Parliament that the PPP was trying to build a first-world airport for a “two-bit” country, that we could build three airports with the $US150M CJIA budget. Soon after May 2015, many of these projects they now boast about and several others were either suspended or thrown in the dumpster simply because APNU/AFC did not want anything with PPP credentials.

However, APNU/AFC was forced to resume some of these PPP projects because they had no plans of their own and because these PPP projects were well thought out and much-needed projects.

The Cheddi Jagan International Airport contract is now more than two years late, there is still no idea when the contract will finally end, the original scope of work significantly reduced and considerable cost overruns. There is no port health facility, no parking lot catered for and, instead of new buildings, there are only renovations. Already, there is disturbing news about overall quality.

Right now, the bathrooms are out of commission, with temporary mobile toilets being used. There is no running water presently. Recently, the air bridges had to be decommissioned, redesigned and reinstalled by different contractors, paid out of additional funds. Shamelessly, APNU/AFC refuses to allow the Auditor General to audit the project, hiding all the documents.

Meanwhile, the road works on the East Coast Demerara Highway expansion continues at snail pace; this too is almost two years late and far above the original cost. The East Bank Berbice Road is still incomplete, even as the completed part is already in need of repairs. The East Bank and West Coast Demerara Highways are already in need of extensive repair work.

While people see something happening on the Sheriff Street by-pass and the Ogle to Grove by-pass roads, neither of these seemed to have moved in any meaningful way. With these woeful results, people are asking whatever happened to the Demerara River Bridge project or the Guyana-Suriname Bridge or the Deep Water Harbour.

Meanwhile, the GPL woes force people to ask what happened to the Amaila Hydro project.
All of these, no exception, were projects started under a PPP government before 2015. All these were projects for which funds were already procured.

Some of these were projects that were already being implemented, although implementation was slowed down because APNU/AFC blocked them in the 2013 and 2014 Budgets in Parliament. For projects not yet started in May 2015, designs were already completed and work poised to begin.

Five years later, these and other projects are still to be completed. Not only are they still to be completed, but APNU/AFC’s redesigns also downgraded the initial projects, with major cost over-runs and major construction deficiencies.

Thus, overall, it is jarring to listen to Granger and his APNU/AFC colleagues boast about these projects. They ought to be ashamed. They took perfectly good projects, butchered and spoilt them. What makes their boasting about these projects even more disgraceful is the context in which they boast.

Take Winston Jordan telling public servants there was no fiscal space to pay them a bonus, there were too many public servants and, should APNU/AFC return to Government after March 2, 2020, about 20,000 public servants will have to be fired. Even as he callously “dissed” public servants, he insisted these public servants should be grateful and proud to see the many good things APNU/AFC has achieved.

In doing so, he followed in the footsteps of Granger, who, two weeks ago, claimed Guyanese are so happy to see him, they are so grateful for the many “great” things happening in Guyana. The “great” things they refer to are the things above.

Granger and Jordan are out of their perverted minds. They are the main culprits for almost 40,000 people out of jobs presently, including two thousand Amerindian youth employed before 2015 as community development officers, hundreds of persons fired because they were “PPP people” in the various ministries, people who were not “Volda’s friends”.

There was the heartless dismissal of more than 7000 sugar workers and the hundreds more in the village economy sustained by the closed sugar estates. As the economy contracted, many more lost their jobs between May 2015 and now. Just this week, Troy Gold Resources announced the dismissal of four hundred workers and the Chinese Contractor for the Sheriff Street By-Pass Project has been issuing termination letters to workers.

And if this is not enough, Jordan and his leader promise that another 20,000 in the public service, GuySuCo and GPL will have to go also.

What is it exactly people must be happy about? Losing their jobs? Watching projects started more than five years ago under the PPP still struggling to be completed, with cost overruns and corruption rife? Granger, Jordan and the rest are not just brazen, they are barefaced.