Over four years after construction began, the $3.6 billion Hope Canal, one of the PPP/C’s administration big-ticket projects, is still to be opened.
The controversial project began under the administration of former president Bharrat Jagdeo and continued under President Donald Ramotar. Conceived following the Great Flood of 2005, the controversial Hope Canal project will drain water from the East Demerara Water Conservancy (EDWC) into the Atlantic Ocean, thereby eliminating the flooding of the Mahaica Creek and its environs.
Currently, when the water reaches a high level in the EDWC, water is drained through the Maduni and Lama sluices into the Mahaica creek, resulting in overtopping and flooding in a vast area of inhabited communities.
However, the Hope Canal project has missed many deadlines and in January, Cabinet Secretary Dr Roger Luncheon blamed cost overruns for the latest missed December 31st, 2014 deadline for the completion of the project. In January, Luncheon had said that most of the work is completed and the eight-door sluice was also expected to be completed soon.
“Once you have expenditure that cannot be recovered, expenditure will have to be made… so the government will complete it if it is needed. If defects have to be corrected and funds are not available, you can’t recover it from the consultant, we will have to correct it,” he had said. Further, Luncheon had added that when the project is completed, along with the defect liability period, netting off will have to be done.
There is some expenditure which contractors and consultants have to bear for the purposes of the overrun, Luncheon had said, adding that it also depends on what can be recovered. No further date was given for the completion of the project.
Engineer Charles Sohan, in a letter to Stabroek News, had said that based on aerial photos of the project, taken in early December 2014, a “tremendous amount of work” is yet to be done to make Hope Canal operational. Sohan had noted that the project is far from completion and unlikely to be fully operational for another year or so before flood waters could be safely released from the EDWC into the Atlantic Ocean.
In February, then Minister of Agriculture Dr Leslie Ramsammy told the Guyana Chronicle that “presently the project is completed, for the large part.”
Work on the canal commenced in February, 2011. The 18-month contractual time frame was never reached due to numerous setbacks. The deadline for the project was initially set for June, 2013, but was subsequently extended to the end of August, 2013, and then once again extended to December 31, 2013, then to June 30, 2014. The deadline was revised again to September then to the end of 2014. These have all been missed.
The Hope Canal Project has four components: the Northern Relief channel, which on completion will be 10.3km in length from the sea defence embankment and extending to the EDWC; a high level outfall sluice; a conservancy head regulator; and a public bridge.
