Dear Editor,
Are the foreign companies UCC and APAN deals tied to providing electrical power above Board? It has come to my knowledge that the government (through GPL) has signed an agreement for the supply of electrical power by a Qatari-Turkiye company (UCC) to generate power from a ship sitting in the Canje River. It is also come to knowledge that there is a silent Guyanese partner of extremely high government rank with UCC on this deal. Will the VP touch him? I am also informed that UCC is “a middle man” between the real owners of the power ship from the Middle East and GPL and that it was contracted to facilitate the transaction of the silent partner. I am also reliably informed that UCC was recently formed.
The power ship was contracted to produce some 35 MW of power but has been unable to do so as one of two engines constantly malfunctioned. And the other is unable to run at full capacity, thereby leading to blackouts. The contract has fixed overhead costs which when spread over the reduced power outputs makes the cost of electricity from the power ship probably the most expensive in the Americas. This is a very similar situation with the old discarded generator sets that were provided by the APAN group out of Trinidad. These unit, installed at Colombia, Mahaicony, Region 5, were supposed to come on stream providing some 27 MW of power. But they were dysfunctional and had to be repaired by GPL engineers and contractors to make them operable with most installation and transmission costs associated with project eventually being borne by GPL rather than the contractor. These units are still not running at capacity and some are completely inoperable. Engineers say they can’t be fixed. No penalty was applied to this contractor. But instead it was further awarded a contract to transport fuel from GPL storage to the Region 5 generation site at more than double the costs of the next highest bidder to provide same service. Even more disgusting is the fact that these sets were supposed to run on a more economical heavy fuel oil but are instead run on expensive diesel fuel putting generation costs at astronomical levels.
As if the above is not enough, the government is now embarking on a contract with the same newly formed UCC to serve as a middle agent for provision of an additional 90 MW of power from another power barge with the same silent partners or beneficiaries making the decision. The proposed price from this new power ship is approximately double what was proposed by other bidders to supply the same amount of power. Can the VP show he seriously wants to stop corruption in Guyana by intervening in the contracts noted above? If he cannot go after questionable contracts noted the above, then he lacks credibility on condemning corruption, and he should not go after anyone else on corruption. His efforts at stopping corruption should start from top down and not bottom up.
Yours truly,
Nigel Pilgrim
