E.C.D. four-lane extension…Contractor rejects bribery demand
- leads to non-payment and contract termination
One of the contractors working on the four-lane East Coast Demerara Highway is convinced that the abrupt termination of his contract was in retaliation to his non-compliance to the corrupt demands of senior officials from the Ministries of Finance and Public Works.
The Managing Director of Falcon Transport and Construction Services, believes that blowing the whistle on corrupt officials could lead to a level playing field for all contractors for future government contracts.
The contractor, who has an impressive record of working with the government, was surprised when he received a letter from the Works Service Group of the Ministry of Public Works, terminating his $468.2 million contract last month.
This was after he had written to the Public Works Ministry indicating that he had suspended works on July 10 over the non-payment by the Ministry since March this year.
Work was suspended on this section of the E.C.D. four-lane road extension at Better Hope.
The Ministry had indicated that poor quality works being executed by Falcon Transportation and Construction Services had raised concerns among Engineers within the Ministry of Public Works and Communications. Transport and Hydraulics Minister, Robeson Benn, had confirmed that the Ministry was displeased with the quality of work.
According to the Ministry, completed works did not satisfy its standards.
But the contractor, in an exclusive interview with this newspaper, declared that the reasons purported by the Ministry are far from the truth. He stated that soon after he received the contract and commenced work on September 6, last year, he was besieged by personnel connected to the Ministry to give a kickback of 4% of the contract sum.
The contractor said that he repeatedly refused to accede to the continuous demands. He believes that his problems started when it was realized that he could not be easily compromised. He charged that the Ministry began coming up with frivolous excuses in an effort to undermine his part of the project.
In fact, he explained that in the first place, it was the Ministry that had frustrated works on the project with several incorrect designs, which resulted in undue delays to the project which was scheduled to last 274 days.
The project entails the widening of the Main East Coast Demerara highway and the construction of concrete drains on both sides of the roadway from Better Hope to Montrose.
In the presence of an experienced Civil Engineer, who he had contracted to do work on behalf of his company, the contractor said that in the first place, the Ministry had “issues” with concrete tests that his company had done.
The contractor said that he had employed a competent technician, who had recently retired from the University of Guyana, to conduct the tests and submit the appropriate report.
“In January when we did the first concrete work tests, he presented a test result to me. We presented it to the Ministry of Public Works who subsequently queried it. They said that this is not authentic; that this is a forged document,” the contractor explained.
The Ministry was questioning the signature on the testing report that was supposed to be that of the head of the facilitating laboratory at the University of Guyana. But apparently there was no effort on the part of the Ministry to verify the signature on the documents related to the tests.
However the Ministry did not refute the results of the tests.
“Those tests results were adequate and they passed the strength tests,” said the engineer, who has more than 30 years experience in civil engineering.
But despite this, the contractor went ahead and did about 20 concrete tests from the University of Guyana, which the Ministry accepted and presently has in its possession.
The engineer informed that it was the Ministry that did not carry out the test procedures correctly.
“They don’t know to do the test…it was not properly done…the methodology they used was poor,” he explained.
The Ministry had also reviewed invoices for material on site which were submitted by the contractor, claiming that they were not above board. This, the contractor said, was another attempt to find unnecessary fault with his contract.
“They claimed that the invoices that I obtained from Gafoor were duplicated. But Gafoor gave an explanation for the appearances of the invoices. The Ministry could have easily verified it by just making a phone call or even contacting Gafoor, but they are too important to do that,” the frustrated contractor told this newspaper.
He stated that the Ministry refused to acknowledge a document from Gafoors authenticating the bills.
According to the contractor, the same invoices were approved by the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) when he made claims for a refund of his Value Added Tax.
“These bills went to GRA and were checked…and I was refunded the VAT from it. It was accepted by GRA as authentic,” the contractor said.
It was on these perceived discrepancies that the Ministry wrote to the contractor informing him that his contract was terminated. He noted that it took the Ministry five months after they queried the discrepancies to terminate the contract.
“They said that I did not reply to their queries, but I did,” the contractor stated, producing a copy of a letter to the Ministry. The contractor said that he has been doing contracts for the government since 1993 and there was never a problem with his invoices and quality of work.
“It’s because of the bribery…I don’t want to give them the money…because the ‘big man’ was dissatisfied,” he stated.
The ‘big man’ the contractor referred to is an official at the Ministry of Finance who had demanded a kickback on the contract sum.
The messenger, he said, was dismissed from his job after the contractor blew the whistle on him.
He disclosed that a Ministry of Works supervisor on the site had requested that the contractor purchase a minibus for him.
“In December, the supervisor on the site, he told me personally if I can buy a minibus for him. I told him ‘you have to work for that’,” the contractor told Kaieteur News. He also revealed that the Ministry of Works Engineer had asked him to fund a part of his wedding, which he also refused to do.
According to the contractor, because of the back and forth queries, the project deadline was extended by the Ministry to October.
“They admit in their time extension, that I have suffered 68 days delay. It took them 68 days to correct their designs. You putting a contract out and while the contractor is working, you correcting numerous mistakes,” the Engineer said.
He disclosed that the design presented by the Ministry’s engineers catered for four feet wide drains on both sides of the road.
But the engineer said that when the contractor surveyed and looked at the existing drainage system, it was discovered that the size of drain that the Ministry recommended would cause flooding, since it was inadequate for a four-lane highway.
“It took them months to correct it. We imposed on them that we would not accept their design and we suggested that it should be six to eight feet,” the Engineer said.
The contractor said that several requests for a meeting with the Ministry to iron out the perceived problems were brushed aside. He claimed that it was not until he suspended work on his part of the project that the Ministry responded by terminating his contract.
The contractor’s firm has done a number of sea defence and road works for the government, including the sub-contracts on the Essequibo Coast road; 6.5 miles of farm to market roads at Parika; road works and culverts in La Parfait Harmonie; construction of road drains and bridges in Kaneville, East Bank Demerara; and maintenance of roads on the West Coast and East Coast of Demerara.
In fact, in 1994, the firm was the first to rehabilitate roads and drains in Region Three.
The contractor is hoping that President Ramotar, who has expressed a zero tolerance approach to defaulting contractors, would reconsider the position taken by the Ministry of Public Works since in this case, the contractor is not at fault.
“The King’s counsellors are not good to him and so his reign would not be peaceful,” the contractor stated.
He noted that if for standing up against corruption one can be victimised, then there will no end to the current state of affairs.
SUNDAY PHOTOS: road work
CAPTION: Work was suspended on this section of the E.C.D. four-lane road extension at Better Hope.
