Dear Editor,
It gives us great pleasure at the Ministry of Public Infrastructure to inform and assure you that the international contracting firm responsible for the installation of elevators at overpasses on the East Bank has signalled their willingness to rectify the faults encountered within the defects liability period of the project.
The Ministry has taken note of a letter published in Kaieteur News on September 29, 2019 under the headline ‘One year later, Minister Patterson still struggles to get one overpass elevator effectively functional’ and hereby provides the following update.
In addition to the elevators not functioning, the Ministry is aware that water has been accumulating in the bottom of the lifts, though marketed by the company as ‘weather resistant’ among other things. It was also reported to us that a glass pane was shattered on the Providence, East Bank Demerara (EBD) lift and that there is a lack of ventilation at the other overpasses situated in Diamond, Houston, Eccles and Peter’s Hall, EBD.
In a letter to the Chief Executive Officer of the contracting firm, dated September 27, 2019, Chief of Works attached to the Ministry of Public Infrastructure highlighted the discomfort being encountered by pedestrians due to these issues. He reminded the Swedish company of their obligations to honour a twenty-four months’ warranty as well as one-year defects liability period and their slow response to the Ministry’s call for remedial works to be done.
In a subsequent response to the Ministry, dated October 2, 2019, the Manager at Cibes Lift International AB wrote on behalf of the contracting firm to assure that a visit will be arranged for November 2019 to assess the situation.
The Manager wrote, “Since the installation we have been working in between trying to solve issues…We are keeping a record of all parts and all correspondence concerning these lifts and we are available on email, phone conference and other… We will send our Main Technical support and Quality manager to see the lift units. This trip will be done in November 2019. At this trip we will go through each lift with RBP and preferably a representative from your side.”
At the Ministry of Public Infrastructure, we sincerely regret the delay in having all lifts at the overpasses fully functional and would like to advise the general public that we continue our discussions and efforts to ensure that our citizens can benefit from this facility as soon as possible.
US$364,000 was allocated for the Diamond overpass and US$1M for those at Houston, Eccles and Peter’s Hall. The project is intended to make crossing easier for pedestrians on the busy EBD Public Road with the number of vehicles increasing significantly on the roadways daily. The elevators were specially designed to assist the elderly and differently abled in addition to all other users. We will therefore continue to work with all stakeholders so that the lifts can be fully functional in the near future.
Yours faithfully,
Davina Ramdass
Public Relations Officer,
Ministry of Public Infrastructure
