Something smelly was revealed by the Public Infrastructure Minister. During Budget 2018, he informed the nation that the Cheddi Jagan International Airport (CJIA) Modernisation and Expansion Project completion will be delayed until December 2018 and the price tag remains US$150 million. This is the original price tag when the People’s Progressive Party (PPP) started the project in 2011. But the project scope has been significantly downgraded.
The original US$150 million project included an airport with eight shoots; that is eight entry and exit links to arriving and departing planes. Now the new design is for only two shoots – a 75 per cent reduction. It gets worst. The arrival and departure terminals which were going to be new buildings are now rehabilitated buildings. The A Partnership for National Unity/Alliance For Change (APNU/AFC) even boasts that the arrival terminals will now be a measly 83 square meters larger, increasing from 14,347 square meters to 14,430 square meters.
The CJIA Project is one of the several PPP projects that are being completed under the APNU/AFC Government; the only real development taking place in Guyana since 2015. The CJIA project, in particular, is being promoted as an APNU/AFC success story. I have no problem with APNU/AFC trying to take credit for the CJIA project and, in fact, I commend them for having the good sense to continue a project that is clearly in the interest of the nation and all of our people. It is poetic justice that they end up taking credit for a project that they actively tried to sabotage between 2011 and 2015. But even as we prepare to commission the new CJIA at the end of 2018, something suspicious is happening with the project.
The APNU/AFC and its supporters are latecomers when it comes to appreciating the virtues of the CJIA project. The project concept and financing arrangements were completed under President Bharrat Jagdeo and construction started under President Donald Ramotar. Before May 2015, David Granger and his APNU/AFC colleagues were loud in their denunciation of the project, describing it as unnecessary. They, in fact, voted down financing for the project in 2013 and 2014. They claimed that the project was rife with corruption and, further, they claimed that the US$150 million price tag was far too high. I was in Parliament then and they claimed they knew of a bigger airport from the Region which they claimed cost less than half of the CJIA Modernisation and Expansion Project. APNU/AFC also claimed that the Chinese contractor was not qualified and not experienced enough and MUST be terminated.
The original project completion date in 2016 became impossible after the project was delayed because the APNU/AFC voted against the project financing during Budgets 2013 and 2014. Further delays occurred because APNU/AFC in 2015 was not certain they wanted to continue with this PPP project. We will recall that the project was only resumed after a visit to China by senior APNU/AFC Ministers. During Budget 2018, the Infrastructure Minister informed the nation that the completion date will hopefully be December 2018. It is late, but we are cautiously optimistic that the project will be completed then.
In spite of our cautious optimism, the downgrading of the design raises troubling questions. They had been quite robust in alleging that the PPP had seriously inflated the budget for the CJIA project between 2011 and 2015 and during the 2015 election campaign, they promised that Ministers who were stealing from this project would be jailed. After May 2015, with APNU/AFC in Government, people had an expectation that based on what they had said before the elections that the price tag would be considerably less. How come then they could not complete the project at a cost seriously below the original US $150 million? How come the US$150 million was not enough and they had to downgrade the design?
The Public Infrastructure Minister, in informing the nation that the “almost” new airport will be commissioned in December 2018, told us that his Ministry is withholding US$7 million from contractors, giving the impression that contractors are being punished for not delivering on time. The truth is no US$7 million is being withheld from contractors. The US$7 million is the sum that is being withheld to cover for the liability defect period. All Government contracts include a sum that is withheld until after the defect liability period. This is the kind of dishonesty that we have come to expect from this Government. Unfortunately, an ever-growing heap of lies is the landscape that we live with under a brazen and shameless APNU/AFC.
