Latest update March 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Jul 22, 2014 News
…Minister sings new tune
There is more mystery now over the whereabouts of several pumps that Government was
supposed to have purchased from an Indian contractor.
Questioned about the pumps yesterday, Agriculture Minister, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy changed his tune, telling a Parliamentary committee on Natural Resources that a Patentia pump station does not have one of the pumps that were supplied by Surendra Engineering.
Rather, it is another pump that was supplied and installed by contractor, Harrichand Tulsi, in a project that cost $265M. The cost of the pump was included in that price, the Minister told reporters after the Parliamentary session yesterday.
But the Minister’s explanation would contradict what would have been reported all along and even from what the official himself has been saying.
Last November, Ramsammy told Kaieteur News that the pumps are currently being installed at Patentia; Bagotstown; Number 19 in Berbice; Windsor Forest; Pine Grove; Mahaicony; East Coast Demerara, and Albion, Corentyne, Berbice.
The Minister had said that one is being shipped to Lima on the Essequibo Coast. He further indicated that pumps at Canje, Rose Hall, Bengal, Crabwood Creek, and Black Bush Polder have been completed and are working.
Different officials from the Ministry have been giving contradicting locations of the pumps and the stations at different times.
Earlier this year, Kaieteur News observed what appeared to be a Surendra pump on a truck at the Patentia location. It is unclear where this one went.
Ramsammy also told the Parliamentary committee that the 14 pumps signed under a US$4M line of credit with Surendra Engineering is part of a larger project where 39 pumps were to be installed across the country.
When one stationed at Rose Hall Town was commissioned a few weeks ago, it was confirmed that it was one of Surendra’s pumps. Another station is currently being built at Enterprise, East Coast Demerara. The Minister disclosed that at that station, one of the Surendra pumps will be installed.
Under the contract, signed since early 2011, Surendra, the contractor who built the Enmore Sugar Packaging Plant, was supposed to supply eight fixed and six mobile pumps.
There have been questions about whether the pumps were actually in the country.
A check at the pump stations listed by the Ministry, found startling evidence that engines for the pumps were bought from different suppliers. At Patentia, the engine came from John Deere. At Vrede-en-Vriendschap, East Canje, the engine was from Doosan. Both the Rose Hall Town and Black Bush Polder pumps had engines that bore marks of Cummins India.
The sign at East Canje suggesting that the cost of the pump station was $194M had been hidden in a nearby GuySuCo pump station, but suspicious officials there threw it out saying that something smelled fishy.
The procurement of the pumps has been a controversial issue ever since the government handed Surendra Engineering a US$4 million contract more than three years ago. The pumps were to be purchased through an Indian line of credit.
Ramsammy had said that tenders for the project were opened in Guyana and in India, and that two companies submitted bids in 2011. However, the contract only became operational in March 2012 and was expected to end one year later. It did not. Instead Government granted a one-month extension.
When the Alliance For Change threatened to cut allocations under the Ministry of Agriculture in the National Budget 2013, the Minister had said that of the 14 pumps, six were delivered to the Government of Guyana and most of the parts of the remaining eight are already in the country.
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