This country very badly needs a cheap and
reliable source of electricity we will never be able to build any industries our
economy or indeed the country itself without it.
Nowhere in our national situation is the
fact that we pay too much for electricity not an issue.
In scandal after scandal surrounding the
generation of power in this country since 1992, our Prime Minister has
blundered through enough mistakes to write a book on how not to run an
electricity corporation.
We generate very little electricity for a
country with our population and size, for example we generate around the same
amount of electricity as Barbados around 800 million kilowatt hours a year for
a population of 280,000 people, Trinidad for example generates nearly 6 billion
kilowatt hours a year to industrialise their economy nearly six times more
electrical power than we do.
Some fool will of course tell me that
Trinidad has oil, my response is that we have something which is much, much
better we have Hydropower.
Some years ago our Hydropower potential
was calculated as around 7,500 megawatts.
For those who want to know what 7500
megawatts of electricity can do, it can supply the electrical needs of all the
Caribbean islands combined, including Trinidad and Cuba.
Recently I was given some documents,
these documents were 1. A Memorandum of Understanding [MOU] between the
Government of Guyana and a company called Synergy Holdings Inc., and document 2
was an analysis and a background check of Synergy Holdings Inc.
When Synergy first surfaced in
Guyana they were in a joint venture partnership with the highly respected Harza
Group and we all understood that this small one man company was only a front
for the mighty Harza group which had built the Guri dam and had over 4000 engineers;
in 2000 Harza merged with another US company and decided that they were no
longer interested in running behind the Guyana Government who did not seem to
want to stop playing the ludicrous games they were playing with ESBI the Irish
Company which was running our Guyana Power and Light at the time, and who
refused to sign an agreement with synergy and Harza to buy power from the Hydro
project at Amelia.
So we were left with Synergy alone. But
that was like taking the coffee out of the coffee, if you do that you're left
with water.
Synergy is essentially a real Estate
company which is owned by one Makeshwar Fip Motilall. Once I have told you the
name you know exactly what is going on.
Synergy has never built any Hydro project
anywhere in the world, in fact Synergy which is a privately owned company and is
not required to divulge its audited financial statements, however according to
information listed on private corporate Financial databases, Synergy's annual
sales for 2005 were listed in the amount of 121,000 Guyana dollars. And the
company lists itself as having two employees flip Motilall and his brother.
A "press release" had referred to flip
Motilall as a chemical Engineer but there is no evidence at the American Institute
of Chemical Engineers that Motilall is registered anywhere in the US as being a
chemical engineer.
Motilall is a small time operator the
civil litigations against him and Synergy attests to that, for example on the 9th
January 2004 K&M electric filed a lawsuit against Synergy for $2500 US
dollars, in June 1998 one Robert E. Thielman DDS sued Motilall in small claims
court for 231 US dollars! In 1995 allied Medical accounts control filed a civil
lawsuit against Motilall for $906 dollars.
These are of course small claims, and
there is no record that either flip Motilall nor Synergy were ever embroiled in
any legal matter of a criminal nature.
Motilall however was found to be a
shareholder of a company called Diversified Manufacturing Corp. which was
reprimanded in October 2005 by the US Food and Drug Administration for
significant deviations from the US current food manufacturing practices.
When the Harza group pulled out from
the Amelia Project Flip then lost my goodwill since he co-opted the following
partners, MaxPower International Corporation registered under the laws of the
state of Massachusetts USA and cj [common c common j] Independent, LLC a company
incorporated in New Jersey USA.
I am not saying that these companies do
not exist, but Harza, Synergy's former partner, is a respected international
company with a track record in Hydroelectric Dam construction but I am unable
to find flip's new partners, which are specifically mentioned in the 2006 MOU
with Sam Hinds to build the hydro plant at Amelia, anywhere on the Inetrnet. They
may be there but I can't find it; enter Tony Vieira in your search engine of
Google and see what happens!
But the conundrums do not end there, the
MOU tells us that we are guaranteeing Synergy and therefore flip
Motilall who is the sole shareholder of Synergy and their partners MaxPower and
cj [if they exist] 550,000 US dollars a month for the next 35 years to supply
us with 100 megawatts of power from Hydro. Ladies and gentlemen you tell me
what I can legitimately conclude from these shenanigans. This means that
Motilall and his invisible Partners can take this ridiculous Memorandum of Understanding
to any Bank anywhere in the world and get the money to build this Hydro plant!
I believe in private enterprise, and I
believe that we should privatise the entire GP&L, all of it, and put it in
private hands and let the PUC demand that they charge us 10 US cents per
kilowatt hour for electricity, starting tomorrow!
But in this case even if we privatised
GP&L I would build the Hydro power facility with a soft loan from the IDB.
I make this statement since as a soft loan from the IDB or the World Bank we
would have 20-25 years to pay back the Loan at a very small interest rate compared
to a private investor, and as such we can amortise the line plant over a 25
year period instead of a ten year period which a private investor would need,
that means that we can start selling the power cheaper from day one. This
project which is so important to our national wellbeing should not be
contracted out to such inexperienced and cash strapped investors, we need
investors with deep pockets so since we are unfortunately in this position
where we cannot attract such an investor we should build this Hydro power
facility ourselves and hire a competent management firm such as Tate in or
sugar industry to manage it for us.
The land is ours, a 100 megawatt Hydro
project at Amelia can create a lake nearly 100 square kilometres in diameter, the
land on which the poles from the hydro project to Georgetown will be placed
will be ours, the land on which the dam itself will be built is ours and the
Amelia falls Hydro Project should be required to pay rent for those privileges
I am not sure that the agreement makes provision for that.
Everything should be regulated on our
behalf by the PUC this does not appear anywhere in the MOU. I can list numerous
other such irregularities.
But it is this which I find the most
reprehensible, this is a democracy, we the people in this country own Amelia
falls and we own the land on which the lake for the Hydro plant will be formed,
why should any agreement between our Prime Minister, GPL and Motilall contain such
stringent confidentially clauses, there are 4 such clauses ladies and gentlemen,
I will read for you the complete clause 4 provisions its says this "upon
request of any delivering party, the respective receiving Parties will promptly
return to it or destroy [as it may specify] all copies [including
Electronic copies] of any confidential information, but may retain any notes,
analyses, or other documents based on or incorporating any confidential
information.
This same secrecy caused Sam Hinds and
this nation great grief with Arairoma and ESBI just to name two, one would have
thought that he, and you and I, since by our silence we are condoning this
nonsense of his keeping us completely in the dark as to how our affairs are
being run, would have learnt by now.
