(Kaieteur News) – A one-off could be seen as being caught off-guard, the product of unpreparedness, which contributed to ignorance. When the same critical challenge occurs a second time, there is significance to that development. It signals that no lesson was learned from the first failure that caught napping. When that same problem happens a third time, then something is more than wrong. There can be no proper basis for the exact same difficulty being encountered yet again. The weakness of soil is the issue that repeats itself. Soil at locations chosen for huge, groundbreaking projects that has the potential to mean a whole new world for citizens. What else could be at work? What is it that is in motion, but which has escaped the attention of keen observers, has left different communities hanging and disappointed and, ultimately, endangered?
The PPP/C Government is in charge, and it is not new to the role of national leadership. It has accumulated decades of experience, a reservoir of knowledge, and confidence on how to go about deciding on expensive projects, and spending taxpayers’ money. We at this paper are baffled that it continues to make the same mistake. Soil weakness aka soil instability or soil integrity has setback three major projects. One is the most expensive to date. The second has all the elements of procurement corruption that the government is supposedly fiercely against, but which still happens when family and friends are the beneficiaries. The third has the grimness of many dead, and no answers, except for the usual damage control and political games that are about self-protection rather than protecting the interests of mostly low-level, expectant, citizens.
The issue of soil stability was first heard of in relation to the US$2B Wales Gas-to-Energy project. The US-based, Venezuelan-led, Lindsayca Guyana Inc., won an award of US$97 million in a dispute about delayed works and the moving of the timeline that followed. For years, and in many editions, this paper has led the call for credible feasibility studies, technical and financial, to be completed, and shared with the public. Deaf ears and haughty mindsets led to the ignoring of those calls, and a lost arbitration that cost this country US$97 million. The suitability of the soil at the project site for the gas conversion and power generation facilities has to number among the most basic of requirements that must be known and met upfront. A run-of-the-mill feasibility study would have pointed to that soil deficit. Whatever was the basis for the US$2 billion project, another US$97 million had to be added for either negligence or what qualifies as self-imposed ignorance. Alongside repeated delays and continuing frustrations (constant GPL blackouts) with the promised electricity relief from the Wales project, death came knocking.
Soil stability, more accurately instability, appeared again, this time with the US$1.4 billion Port Kaituma wharf that was completed to a point, then left dangling in that unfinished state. In this instance, US$1.4 billion diminishes to nothing. For when that wharf was not ready and operating, the MV Barima had to continue dragging its weakened and rickety hull in Guyana waters, which lead to 73 dead and an uncertain number missing and, certainly, dead. The same fundamental question, concern, was: can the soil on which this wharf is to be erected handle the related works and comfortably absorb the related pressures? When neither time nor interest was found for that most routine of questions, one boat could not dock, and the MV Barima was set for her death ride. This is more than soil weakness. It is about criminal negligence at its most heinous. Oil is flowing copiously, with higher daily production volumes within grasp. US billions can be written off, a swift and easy book entry, but it should never be the same for 73, or any other number of, dead citizens. There should be no bickering about who is responsible. There should be the most drastic housecleaning from top to middle to bottom, with none overlooked, pardoned, or allowed to claim immunity.
After so many dead, soil weakness makes the news again, now at the controversially awarded $865M Belle View pump station. A third area, the same soggy, unsuitable soil. Soil weakness costs the country, kills its citizens.
Source: Kaieteur News
