After US$150M CJIA renovation…Airport forced to close clogged toilets
For several hours between Friday evening and Saturday morning, the lavatories at the Departure and Arrival areas at the Timehri airport went down.
It would be one of a number of embarrassing woes of the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA).
The toilets were out of order on Friday evening for several hours.
There was supposed to be a brand new airport terminal that, although criticised in the inception, would have been the pride and joy of Guyana.
One of the reasons for a new terminal building was that the existing sewer system was unable to deal with the volume of passengers.
However, there was no new terminal building. Instead, the old one was gutted and renovated with a new, smaller building to accommodate the Arrivals area.
According to the 2011 contract that the Government of Guyana signed with the Chinese contractor, China Harbour Engineering Company Limited (CHEC), 69 toilet bowls; 50 desktop wash basins; six vertical wash basins; 36 urinals and three showers were supposed to be installed.
However, passengers arriving and visitors are forced to use a washroom area outside of Immigration. That washroom, comprising about two toilet bowls and four or five urinals was the one that went down Friday night after becoming clogged.
Over at the Departure area, it was the same problem. There are three or four toilets with about the same number of urinals.
The toilets were out of order on Friday evening for several hours.
The toilets were out of order on Friday evening for several hours.
More toilets next the Lotus Restaurant have been abandoned because of a clogged system,
There were caution tapes and signs pasted on the doors to the washrooms.
Persons were forced to line up to use the washrooms in some instances, Kaieteur News was told.
The situation of the toilets being clogged will continue and is not going away in a hurry, one official disclosed.
It is a situation that has been bothering and embarrassing the government.
Several months ago, heavy rains flooded sections of the airport.
Then there was the decision to suspend the use of the four passenger bridges after the foundation they are sitting on started to sink.
In March, passengers in the Departure area complained of the smell from the toilets.
CHEC was supposed to hand over the Timehri airport earlier this year after missing deadline after deadline.
It is not clear what CHEC did to deal with the problems inherited in the old terminal building.
What is known is that Government has attempted to defend the modifications, noting that it was able to wrangle some extra work from the contractor.
CHEC had approached the Bharrat Jagdeo government to build the airport.
It helped secure a loan from China’s Ex-Im Bank for over US$130M. The rest of the monies were coming from Government.
The contract with CHEC was for US$138M. It has spanned three administrations and still to be completed.
It included a longer runway to cater for the wide-body jets, a brand new glass covered terminal with escalators, elevators and eight passenger bridges.
However, the CJIA will only be getting four bridges and there is no glass roof.
CHEC, in its contract and cost, had jacked up the prices for material and workmanship by hundreds of percent, in some cases.
Government itself admitted that CHEC erred in starting the runway in the north, but ran in soil issues, wasting millions of US dollars, before being forced to construct the additions in the south.
However, Government did little to sanction the company.
Rather it decided to modify the project, at the cost of the Guyana people.
Guyana still has to pay back that loan that it took for the airport, currently the largest ongoing infrastructural project.
Government has said it was forced to modify the project as when it came into office in 2015, it found that a significant portion of the contract sum was paid out with little work done.
Rather than abandoning the work, CHEC and the Coalition agreed to modify the designs.
The Opposition has scalded the Coalition on the modifications, insisting that it was a fixed price agreement that no room for design modifications.
CHEC, while undertaking the Timehri airport project, had been working simultaneously on the MovieTowne project.
The latter is completed.
CHEC is now steaming ahead with the Pegasus Hotel expansion project, in Kingston, Georgetown.