Showing posts with label Amaila Falls project. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amaila Falls project. Show all posts

Friday, May 28, 2010

A king without clothes

We refuse to imagine Him without clothes....any person who struts their ego must be agonizingly insignificant, so Freud would tell us.

Think of the King...Hail the King.

1) Where does the filth come from?
It may take a master to analyze the psychology of the King of Guyana. Which end does the filth pour from? All over Freddie, all over the poor cricketer-guy (to put a different spin), all over the Amerindians, all over the Indians, all over black people, all over Guyana. The poop-bags like lumumba et al are but the gaseous pre or post bubbles of the rest.

1) The drivel that is Fip was used to fool the nation. So confuse the nation with US15million while tying up a US600million deal. Confuse the press into a frenzy with 15million while working out the deals of a lifetime.

Then sacrifice Fip, because the bigger deal is done. So that makes him Shine like a champion. The savior of the masses, the champion of earth. Take justice to Fip. He deserves it. he cannot finish the work. Champion's hireling Luncheon gave a clue to that yesterday.

2) Sexual offenses bill. Yeah! A pedophile works as liaison to the King. He took the king's ooze and threw it at freddie's face. Yet, the king publicly spoke of his dislike for "man-kissers". Show me your friends....

There are records, documents, public accusations of ministers who have raped, pimped and sexually harassed young (stupid) women in their offices. Sexual offense?

The King himself, lived in sin, sleeping with a woman that he told the country was his WIFE! The ooze flowed with his 'explanation'. Sexual offense?

The King took Stanley Ming's relative to Lethem as his companion - well, that is not rape, she's big - but he has to prove that the man-kissers around him does not overly affect his suspicioned fatuous insignificance - then create a scandal to ensure that everyone knows he was with this woman. The poor fool, young and silly, has disgraced her family. Sexual offense?

3) The farce of the government fiber is another master idea aimed at pushing business to B-Yong and B-rassington. The latter is owner of an island in Essequibo (with a yacht moored to boot!). B-Yong operates his "business" front in a building owned by B-rassington. The King's cable will be "managed" by B-Yong and b-rassington (remember our previous post about B-rassington's brother in ICT business in USA). Meanwhile, the "Laptop per family" contract will be given to these two to bring in 100,000 laptops that will crash in a year or with 2-hour battery life to span the blackout. Cheap, affordable will be their words - after all it is a Government contract.

4) Laws and more laws. are passed to protect the B's. The King's filth flowed at a public forum when he called on his man-friend B-rassington to educate Yesu Persaud. Next day, the legal fools were scrambling to the King's desire to put laws in place to legalize the deals that the King made with B-ubby.

The filth has flowed for so long - we are b-lind, bitten by the Bs, fed BS everyday.

Should we go on?

Thursday, May 27, 2010

This is Guyana

Hats off to Stabroek News for this article.

Many of the shires (counties) in the UK have web portals which begin with the words ‘This is,’ and what they do is provide a wealth of information on the area. For instance, a visitor to Leicestershire would find on its ‘This is’ page, historical information, where to find what, news, links to jobs, real estate, pubs, almost everything anyone might need to know. Perhaps this may have caught on in other places in some other parts of the world. Not in Guyana, though. Here, ‘This is Guyana’ is a sentence that brings with it connotations of everything that could possibly be wrong.

For example, if one found oneself waiting at 10:00 hrs for a scheduled 09:00 hrs event to begin, the reason that would be given is that this is Guyana. It is used almost wholesale to explain practically every flawed eventuality: blackouts, corruption, nepotism, unsolved crimes, water shortages, injustice – the list can go on and on. But it’s a useless tally really, since no true Guyanese would like to see any of this on a web portal introducing Guyana to the rest of the world.

Just this last Monday, President Bharrat Jagdeo, as he launched what was called the third draft of Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy, shed some light on the “Guyana way of doing things.” He intimated that though there had been no consensus in Copenhagen last December, Guyana was not prepared to turn away from playing a role in combatting climate change. He held out the hope that his imminent trip to Norway would bear fruit to the tune of millions of US$ to be spent over the next few years on climate change initiatives, one of which was the Amaila Falls hydropower project.

This hydroelectric project, which the President said would cost some US$450 million will, the ‘This is Guyana’ invocation notwithstanding, be ready for commercial operation by October 2014. Hardly believable it is, that Guyana will have commercial quantities of green energy in the next four years – all things being equal that is. One question that is yet to be completely and comprehensively answered is whether this hydropower will be available throughout the entire country.

In the meantime, while we await this progressive step we must continue to endure the blackouts and the high and low voltages still being supplied. We must still resign ourselves to using candles, flambeaux and kerosene lamps, especially the poor families who cannot afford the high electricity rates, or those who live in unelectrified communities, or the residents of Berbice, where periods of outage currently exceed periods of power supply.

Obviously, no one needs any alternative form of energy. Who cares if Food For The Poor in collaboration with the Roetheli family of the USA successfully built 100 houses in the Lil Red Village and supplied each one with solar power? What does it matter if smaller hydropower projects might be more feasible? After all, it’s just another four years then all will be well.

Meanwhile, we must unquestioningly swallow the drivel being fed to us by smarmy politicians; like the “one laptop computer per family” statement, dished out last week by Minister of Education Shaik Baksh, who said government is working out the modalities and costing for this initiative. Surely this cannot precede the completion of the great hydroelectric project. For while we are not all tech savvy, certainly everyone must know that laptops carry batteries which must be charged and that this cannot be done with candles, flambeaux or kerosene. And unless there are also plans to have Wi-Fi throughout the country, there will be need for other infrastructure to allow the laptops to access the World Wide Web. But why worry, this must have all been thought through. It just was not conveyed to the rest of us. After all, this is Guyana; this is the Guyana way of doing things.

Sunday, May 16, 2010

Adoration

We respectfully quote the entire Stabroek News' editorial of Sunday May 16, 2010.

Public adulation, extravagant receptions, congratulatory advertisements, laudatory billboards – what head of state could ask for more? If it weren’t for those pesky, geriatric critics gulping down their bitter brew in the dark recesses of their favourite cake shops, our President’s cup would have ‘runneth’ over and left him standing knee-deep in a syrup of flattery.

Certainly no president since Burnham has been the recipient of this amount of public ‘adoration’ – and no one needs to be told how popular he was with large segments of the population, especially in his later years. Both the Jagans as well as Hoyte were very unpretentious people, and while the protocols necessary for a head of state were observed, there was none of this level of glorification. While President Jagdeo has won a UN award, for which he deserves appropriate congratulations, it appears to have gone way beyond this, and been made the excuse for a major publicity campaign to exalt him in the eyes of the populus. But why, one wonders? Has he been such a failure that his spin-doctors find it necessary to try and boost his reputation to distract from his poor image? If he had a good image in the first place, then it would hardly seem necessary to go to these lengths. After all, why gild the lily?

And what about the President himself? What does he think driving around Georgetown seeing these billboards sprouting like mushrooms bearing his own face smiling back at him? Does he not feel even a tad uncomfortable? Did he ask whose genius of an idea this was? And most of all, did he ask whether the taxpayers were footing the bill for this bit of seeming narcissism? Or is this a generous donation from one (or more) of his admirers? If it is, who gave permission for the city’s parapets to be utilized for this purpose? The Mayor and City Council?

All of this may play well with the President’s support base, and perhaps even with the Amerindians who are geographically removed from the political shenanigans of the Lower East Coast, and whose dancers are brought down to perform at the adulatory functions, but surely the spin-doctors know that this kind of saturation acclaim really convinces no one else. In fact, it may succeed in alienating them further; many will see it for what it is: an example of rank propaganda. Have the architects of this campaign forgotten so soon what it was like during Burnham’s days? How the population took all the promotion of personality and the fawning by some noisy disciples with a pinch of salt? How they picked up the Chronicle every day and read between the lines? How they watched with a cynical eye as the motorcades and outriders zipped past at full throttle?

So again, what are the spin-doctors trying to accomplish? Surely they don’t think that because the foreigners have given the President an award, the local population will be overwhelmed. Can they seriously believe that Guyanese are incapable of exercising their own judgement? Despite what they think, in the end the electorate of this country is primarily concerned about what he does now and has accomplished here, and where that is concerned elements of his record are in question and will not be erased by any number of outside awards. It might be mentioned in passing that in any case the UK only last week asked for an independent inquiry into the phantom squad at the UN meeting in Geneva.

It might be said that this whole campaign is coterminous with a sudden flurry of projects, foremost among which is Amaila Falls, closely followed by a revivified Marriott Hotel. The most problematic of the two by far is the first-mentioned of these. As was asked in SN’s editorial of April 19, for a project which has been hovering around for about thirteen years, why the sudden rush now? Amaila will involve a huge undertaking and has been promoted by a small company which has absolutely no experience with hydro facilities and at best could only act as a middleman. Mysteriously it has recently been awarded the preliminary road project for Amaila although it appears to have no experience in road-building either. Despite persistent questions asked by a variety of sources, there have been no clear answers from the government.

Is this what the hagiography campaign is all about? Distracting from Amaila? Or is it for the benefit of an overseas audience which would have to provide the funding? Is the message: here is a President who has accomplished great things on the environmental front, not just abroad, but at home as well; the Amaila Falls project forms a part of this, and he has the unequivocal support of a grateful population? Even if that were what the propagandists wished to convey, it does not answer the question of why the haste to take on Amaila at this late stage?

We have, of course, a national election supposedly coming up next year. Is this campaign connected to that – in some labyrinthine way?

Tuesday, May 4, 2010

Fipping along

The plot thickens as the Tale of Fip continues. This is probably the most incestuous contract ever awarded in recent times, as we have learnt that Fip Motilal is related to Bharrat Jagdeo on this is father’s side.

While this is a small picture compared to the bigger painting of corruption involving NICIL, the Office of the President and several government officials, more information is flowing as we continued our exploration of the man who promises us Hydro Electricity.

If you check our archives we were the first to alert out readers to the snail’s pace in which Hydro-electricity was being dealt with when we asked Fip to slip the swith.

As we uncover more on Fip, one official told us that the man is no stranger to being awarded government contracts. In fact, the official told us that the government ought to explain who the contracts for the supply of the two generators for the Guyana Power and Light Company were awarded to Synergy Holdings. In fact, two senior government officials raised an alarm about this but these were ignored by the forces higher up.

We are told that the two officials were frustrated to the point where a major project had to be delayed several times since Fip could not deliver the products for the start of this project. We understand that the government had to step in and clean up and mess and take more money from the Lotto Funds to cover its track and get the project started.

Lets just say the project was launched last year!

As we find out more details about our friend Fip, the man is listed as a Chemical Engineer on one of his many profiles on the internet but no one could explain if this is indeed true, where he studied and when.

All we know is that nothing makes sense in this web of Synergy, the award for the contract to build the road to Amaila Falls or the Hydro Electricity but what can we say but what a tangled web we weave.

Question: Is Jagdeo exempt from submissions to integrity commission?

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Flips, Fibs, Fling, Flassington and Flagdeo

FIP’s FIBS

Well Fip, Ashni and Winston ought to be awarded for the Best Actor and Best Supporting actors respectively in the movie Synergy or not!

Kudos to Kaieteur News for the excellent piece of journalism this week, that skin up the PPP government and their lies as they sought to give another friend more of our tax payers money!

Well Fip lied when he said that Synergy Holdings built road in the state of Georgia in the US.

The good folks in the transparent State Department in Georgia must be wondering ‘who the heck is Fip and what the hell is Synergy ?’ cause the plot thickened when We found out that poor Fip and Synergy never had any Road Building experience!

Now now, the government will have to explain why exactly it was given Fip US$15 million! Because we KNOW that Fip would not be building any roads to the Amaila Falls.

Our sources indicated that that this money could have been to bluff investors that the project is starting while helping their dear Friend Fip to get on his feet.

Fact is, Synergy Holdings has NOT done a single work anywhere in the world! NO one really knows what they are all about their webpage is just a cheap publicity stunt.

Amazingly, since 2002 when Fip presented the government with a proposal he couldn’t get this thing running??!

But we know that 2011 is closer and the PPP has to offer its supporters something for them to be returned to office, even if it’s a road in the forest.

Just be reminded that Fip claimed that he is doing windmill projects in Minnesota and Kansas also and we are still looking for those projects!

We wonder if Brassington is in his right sense when he says that ‘ this is the single most important project at this time’ He forget the fibre optic cable he and his friends are suppose to be bringing from Brazil.

Shucks! this is really a talk half left half piece!

But we will leave you with Synergy Holdings Mission Statement:

MISSION STATEMENT
To plan and develop projects that offer the greatest benefits to the most people with the least impact on our environment. We firmly believe that progress and development can be accomplished synergistically with the environment, not at its expense.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Spin! Fip! Brassnicil! Money gone!

Shameless !!
The government gives another other sweet heart deal, this time to Fip Motielall saying that Synergy Holdings was the lowest bidder for the road to Amaila Falls Hydro Project. Well, so says a NICIL source (look who opening his mouth) who told Stabroek News that the $15 million road building contract was awarded to SH since it was the lowest bidder !

Why worry about the future of Guyana when we have geniuses like these? What a combination! Lowest bidder with no experience wins contract. In this case lowest bidder, no road building experience! Wow!

NICIL (and We know damn well who got the ‘voice’ to speak on this project at NICIL) said that 4 tenders were submitted. We would like to hear names! Cause I know one big contractor who has been gunning for this project since 1999 feels cheated. Even though responded to Stabroek News last week about all these concerns, he has not uttered one word about his company’s road building capabilities.

At least two new agencies have reported on a Request for Proposals document. Stabroek News said that the documents said that the construction is based on a time of essence basis (after 15 years) and must be completed in 8 months !

But wait !!! The same document says that our Dear Fip’s company must reach various criteria!
- He must have done a similar project,
- He must list examples of previous works and
- he must submit details of the equipment he owns and human resources.

Fip must know that he has to repair an existing roadway and build a road on virgin territory. What is the default clause this time?

Sickly spin doctor Roger said last week that those who are questioning the awarding of this contract have sinister motives, So Roger put a spin on this one.

Spin! Fip! Brassnicil! Money gone!

(We have been watching the developments of this project as many would have noticed in out previous post asking FIP to flip the switch on this project. This project has been in an incubator for more than 15 years)

Monday, March 1, 2010

WHEN WILL FIP FLIP THE SWITCH?



WHEN WILL FIP FLIP THE SWITCH?
Since 1996 Synergy Holdings Incorporated has been ‘working’ to bring the Amaila Hydro Project to life’. Synergy Holdings Inc is owned by overseas-based Guyanese Makeshwar ‘Fip’ Motilall and each year from 1996 Guyanese have been promised that this Hydro Electricity Project will be powered up.

Here is a recap of these promises:
In 2008 Motilall said that the Engineering, procurement and construction bids would have been closed on the 30th October, 2008 and contractors would have been identified shortly with works going into ‘full swing in the 1st quarter of 2009’.

But this laughable position was later given at another forum which was attended by His Excellency President Jagdeo. The bids were pushed back and the investors and the government agreed that giving bidders an extension of time ‘would benefit all concerned’.

What has happened since?
There was talk that Sithe Global Power would have been providing $400 million and there were eager investors waiting to pump money into this.
In 2002 Motilall was quoted as saying that the project could cost $312 and this would be obtained from private financial institutions. (NONE NAMED because NONE CAME FORWARD).

BUT in 2006 here is what we heard, ‘we are STILL AWAITING FINANCIAL CLOSURE FOR THIS PROJECT’.

While there have been talks about the project kicking off in 2010 from 1996 to now there has been a long list of promises and excuses about this project.
This 100 megawatt facility is expected to reduce Guyana’s dependency on fossil fuels. We spend more than 40% of our GDP on Fuel!

YOU TELL US WHY INVESTORS ARE NOT TUMBLING OVER EACH OTHER TO PUMP MONEY INTO AMAILA??