PARLIAMENTARIANS from the government side of the National Assembly have debunked charges of impropriety in relation to the Berbice River Bridge project, and decried a motion brought before the House by a member of the People’s National Congress Reform-One Guyana (PNCR-1G) as an attempt to stall the construction of the vitally needed bridge.
The motion by Mr. James McAllister of the PNCR-1G was debated at the sitting of the National Assembly Tuesday. It had called for a suspension of the project to allow an investigation by the Economic Services Committee to determine what influenced the government to change from a pre-stressed concrete bridge to a floating steel bridge.
The motion was defeated.
McAllister claimed the feasibility study by the Louis Berger Group was flawed and “doctored” and rhetorically asked who requested the “doctoring” and for what reason.
He further contended that a review of the feasibility by Louis Berger done by Patricio Milan Development Consultants, found that estimates of the cost of construction and maintenance of a floating steel bridge by the former were grossly underestimated. He said the Milan review showed that a fixed concrete pre-stressed bridge between Providence and Augsburg is the only economically viable alternative, instead of the floating steel bridge between D’Edward and Crab Island where preparatory work has already begun.
He also claimed the government had deliberately sought to change the location to bypass New Amsterdam for sinister reasons.
Mr. David Patterson, of the Alliance For Change (AFC), said while his party fully supports a bridge across the Berbice River and in the shortest possible time, it feels a pre-stressed concrete bridge would have been more economically viable in the long term, because the lifespan of a floating bridge is 30 years compared to 70 years for the former.
He argued that while the cost of a concrete bridge is higher, this is counter-balanced by the higher maintenance cost of a floating bridge which also has a shorter life span.
But Minister of Transport and Hydraulics, Mr. Robeson Benn, said he was “perturbed” by the “plethora of fiction” from McAllister and declared he was “a poor juggler.”
On the issue of “doctoring” of the Louis Berger study, Benn said he found it ridiculous that an internationally recognised firm which functions from within the European Union, with an annual turnover of business amounting to some 34 billion Euros, and established since 1953, will resort to such an impropriety.
He further expressed amazement at such a claim against the backdrop of the monitoring capacity of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) which is involved in the project and said it would have unearthed any such impropriety.
The minister declared that any call for a halt to the project to conduct an inquiry is an attempt to “ambush and bushwhack” it.
On the issue of bypassing New Amsterdam, Benn said the allegation smacks of ethnic considerations but stressed that the government has no such intention to neglect the township and informed the House that currently $700M is being spent to refurbish all the roads there and in its environs.
In addition, the road to Mara is being rebuilt and farmers will soon have better access to markets, the minister said.
With respect to the Milan review, Benn said it was done based on the maintenance costs of a floating bridge in Florida and that was why it found the Louis Berger study to have been under-estimated. He also said the preference of a floating steel bridge has to be seen in the context of available financial resources.
Minister of Health, Dr. Leslie Ramsammy also denounced the motion as an attempt to stop a legitimate private company from enjoying its corporate right and to frustrate development being fostered by the government in partnership with the private sector.
He said too that Milan did not conduct its review in Guyana and did not even know that Guyana had a floating bridge which it could have used and instead used a bridge in Florida which resulted in it erroneously concluding that the Louis Berger study underestimated the costs of constructing and maintaining the bridge.
Ramsammy emphasised that the Berbice River Bridge is “a dream come true” for all Berbicians and said the motion is an attempt to “frustrate and defer the dreams of Berbicians and all Guyanese.”
He recalled that while the ferry service has improved in the last 10 years, the bridge has become a necessity because of the cumbersomeness, frustration and the time consuming nature of the ferry crossing.
Currently, 220,000 vehicles, 1.5 million tonnes of cargo and two million commuters are ferried across the Berbice River annually, he said.