Ministry of Local Govern-ment evaluators including engineers are currently tweaking the project proposal for Guyana’s first solid waste recycling plant and should take the new document to Cabinet for its approval by month end.
Minister of Local Government Norman Whittaker told Stabroek News that there is team which is working on “getting the proposal to the specifications that Cabinet asked for to meet Guyana’s waste recycling needs.” He explained that the process was two tiered with the first being the completion of the project proposal to be resubmitted and approv-ed by Cabinet and the last the ministry contacting the six firms, which had submitted their proposals, to inform them of the changes needed.
Cabinet Secretariat Dr Roger Luncheon had said earlier last month that a proposal made by the Ministry of Local Govern-ment representative had been reviewed and needed to be reworked to meet specified requirements of government.
“The recycling project, when it was presented to Cabinet… drew a strong request for the process to be redone, with a particular perspective for them to conform to what the government wants,” Luncheon had said.
He informed that the ministry was however directed to inform the companies of government’s requirements and when their respective expressions of interest have been tweaked to government’s expectations Cabinet will once again look at the issue.
He explained that most of the proposals dealt with converting waste to energy and while this was feasible in developed and industrialised economies, Cabinet had difficulty believing it would work here. “So they were asked to rework it to meet the realities of the waste and composition of waste in Guyana,” he explained.
“A lot of the proposals dealt with conversion of waste to energy and there continues to be considerable doubts in our minds… we don’t have that kind of industrial waste because this is not an industrialised society,” he further added.
Luncheon’s announcement was a further setback for a project mired in controversy ever since it was first unveiled last year by the former minister of local government, Ganga Persaud. Critics had said that the tendering process should not have been handled by the Ministry of Local Government.
Whittaker explained that as he was away from his desk, when speaking to Stabroek News, he did not have the names of the six companies readily at hand but will make them available.
Government had announced its preference to collaborate with firms that had previous working experience in building such facilities in other countries.
