Staffers of the Guyana Revenue Authority (GRA) may soon be able to operate under better conditions as the roof on their Camp Street Headquarters is to be repaired.
Commissioner General of the GRA, Godfrey Statia told reporters yesterday that construction on the roof for the building which has been leaking for years will begin in two weeks.
“The contractor has said they can begin work in 2 weeks and be finished 8 weeks after that,” he said explaining that the approximately $50 million contract has already been tendered and cleared by Cabinet.
He noted that the structural issues which the building has means that the contractor will be forced to construct the roof with material lighter than zinc sheets.
“The building is sinking so we have been told that you have to use minimal weight,” Statia explained.
He shared how staffers whose offices are consistently being flooded have been forced to bore holes in the walls of the building so that accumulated water can be drained and expressed the hope that the new roof can remove these concerns until the new campus is built.
The campus which is expected to be built on a 19-acre plot at Lilliendaal is closer to becoming a reality as GRA has signed a 50-year lease for the land with the Guyana Lands and Surveys Commission.
Having signed the lease Statia explained that a cabinet paper for the approval of the building is now being prepared.
In August 2015, Minister of Finance Winston Jordan told the National Assembly that the government is looking to relocate the GRA office as the Camp Street office was “not fit for occupation.”
The minister’s pronouncement came days after the chairman of the GRA Board Rawle Lucas told Stabroek News that the five-storey building was deemed as “sufficiently safe” for continued occupation by experts out of the Ministry of Public Infrastructure.
Jordan told the National Assembly that the building was found to be “structurally, I don’t want to use the word unsafe because it may frighten people, but let us say it is structurally not in keeping with the activity for the people in there.” He added that things were made worse by an earth tremor.
The tremor occurred in July,2015 following which the building had to be evacuated. There were reports of it swaying and subsequently cracks were observed.
GRA is renting the building from the National Insurance Scheme for $5M a month. In October 2012, GRA began its move into the building but not before a consultancy firm was hired at a cost of $4.5 million to prepare the building for occupancy. Government would later award a contract for a whopping $227.1 million to complete and modify the building so that it could be occupied by the GRA.
Prior to occupying the Camp Street building, the various GRA departments were spilt up and located in various parts of the city. The move to the Camp Street building was intended to enable one central location for all its operations.
