Synergy Holdings could only hire Chinese labourers to work on the Amaila Falls access road if it is impossible for local personnel to deliver on the contract, Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon says.

Asked yesterday during his post Cabinet briefing about whether Chinese labourers would be hired to build the road, Luncheon said he did not know. He said, however, that contractual terms would not support a resort to external resources if not absolutely necessary. “If it were possible that the entire contractual terms were delivered or could be delivered by local skills and expertise, our rules, our regulations would not support a resort, which would be unnecessary then, externally,” he said.

Nevertheless, Luncheon said that “the contractor in terms of the bidding document has a right to sub-tender, to go out to support the execution of the contract by recruiting our sub-contractors.”  “And I don’t believe that that in the bidding document, is in anywhere harnessed by geography,” he added.

In response to another question concerning the delay in the project, Luncheon said the government was concerned but pointed to the insulation presented by the bidding documents. “We’re always concerned. But the design of the bidding document does provide for some amount of insulation of the clients,” he said. “So, yes we will of course be concerned with delays but a suitable contract would not cause the concern to be translated into anything unproductive or not productive,” he stated.

President Bharrat Jagdeo during his most recent press conference said that Fip Motilall, the President of Synergy Holdings, would have to deliver on the project or face the consequences.  He had also mentioned the possibility of Chinese nationals working on constructing the road.

“There may be Chinese workers and there will probably be Guyanese workers too. They may be from both sides,” he said.  He made this comment weeks after a framework agreement had been signed in China formalizing the cooperation between the Guyana Power and Light Incorporated, Sithe Global, Amaila Holdings Limited, the China Development Bank, and the China Railway First Group Company Limited.

On Wednesday, when Transport Minister Robeson Benn was asked about the Chinese workers, he said he was unaware about such an arrangement. “Chinese! I don’t know anything about any Chinese; we are dealing with the road,” he said.
When this was put to a senior government official recently, he said that Chinese would have experience dealing with forested areas that many local workers lack. Asked if having Chinese workers would be a part of the framework agreement recently signed, the official said that while this agreement was dealing primarily with financing for the project, it would not be strange if the use of Chinese labourers was indeed part of the pact.