Dear Editor,
I read with great surprise and felt baffled, that a man of the calibre of Mr GHK Lall should recommend hiring Dutch consultants to address the flooding in Georgetown for the following reasons:
1) The government needs to hire a director and support staff to prepare a business plan and Terms of Reference for a hydrology/water resources consultancy firm to do a feasibility study. The director must be a civil engineer (knows enough hydrology), not necessarily a hydrology specialist engineer, with many years of experience in actual design, contract documents, building engineering projects, both in the private and government sector. The person should also have bilateral funding agency experience, versatile managerial skills, etc.
2) The consultants must be hired by a competitive process through the Tender Board, or else we will be doing the things the PPP did, using the procedures we condemned. It is the people’s money.
3) To suggest Dutch consultants sounds prejudicial, and says that the American, Canadian, and British engineers are not qualified to handle flooding problems. I feel very saddened by this. I am a Canadian engineer/manager, and have demonstrated that I am versatile in management, since I managed, as a Canadian engineer, an education programme (The Primary Education Improvement Program-PEIP), in Guyana, which was the largest loan the country had at that time. This programme consisted of the writing and printing of textbooks, including teachers’ manuals, and scope and sequence charts. It also covered the training of teachers; distance teaching; NCERD; the training college; 43 scholarships to the UK for education administrators and teachers; repairing and building new schools, etc, etc.
As a refresher, I was the Director of PEIP from 1994 to 1997, on special leave from the Canadian government at the request of Dr Jagan. I discussed value for money and corruption, and on March 6, 1997 Dr Jagan died; I was terminated on March 7, 1997. Mr Ramjattan stood firm against corruption, and reviewed an 11-page letter I sent on the subject. Canadian engineers are not only versatile, but also have integrity and Dharma.
4) I am persuaded to send to Mr Lall, if I am provided with his email address, a copy of the technical requirements/approach and funding to resolve the flooding, etc, that I sent to the Minister on June 6, 2015.
Yours faithfully,
Joe Persaud
