‘Who to pay for Cruise Pier Project delays?’ – Hon. Andrew A. Fahie
Hon. Fahie in a recent exclusive interview with this news site said that there have been weeks of delays and to have a multi-million dollar project done in this manner is extremely disheartening to say the least.
“The government attempt to paint anyone that questions their actions as negative or unworthy of challenging them will not stand the test of time. These actions I am not sure can be corrected at this point. Which means the people will be saddled with another situation like the Peebles Hospital expansion which was signed by this same government many years ago when they were in power without making sure they had all the funding before they signed it secured and we know what happened next,” he said.
According to Hon Fahie it was the Minister for Communications and Works Honourable Mark H. Vanterpool who had indeed a few weeks ago indicated that the project was eight weeks behind. “And this again is alarming and I don’t want to continue harping on this but we are talking about a multi-million dollar project that could go as high as $70ml based on the conduct that is ongoing,” he said.
He said that the government does not have a clue how they are going to fund the full project and continues to make a series of blunders which is natural because the full thought process has not gone into it which is needed to advance a project of such magnitude.
“It seems let us fix and adjust as we go. You could take those chances with your private business even then you have to be careful because when certain mistakes are not easy to fix,” said Hon Fahie.
“But what the Minister has not told us is a few things about this, what is that eight weeks in terms of dollars and cents, did the ports set aside monies for these variations and I asked this question during the debate, because the ports only got $35ml from First Caribbean and the first two contracts they signed already exhausted the $35ml and probably even over so where would the port get the monies for these variations,” said Hon Fahie.
He suggested that the Ports Authority obviously seems to have money stashed away because they would have already given the company that they recently formed $5ml to invest in the project without first going to the House of Assembly for discussions.
“The Ports’ money is the people’s money; Social Security’s money is the people’s money so these secret investments and these secret moves based on the history of the project is why these things come into question. Not that the project is not a good project, not that the investment might not have been a good investment but based on the history of the project these things have to be looked at with a microscopic eye and when you analyze the variations in terms of dollars and cents an eight weeks to twelve weeks time frame of being behind is not two dollars or eight dollars …it is going to be some significant dollars with more variations to come based on behind.”
He said that on top of that one has to factor in the longer they take to get the dock completed what incentives they had to offer to the ships to come in “because we’ll be using more money because of a poorly planned project than we think.”
“With this size variety we must ask the question, whose fault is it for the delays being experienced in the project?” Hon Fahie asked.
He said that if it is the contractor’s error then the question would be what is the stance of the Port, but if it is the government and Port’s error for the delays then the question would be when, how come and also many other questions would have to follow because somebody has to pay for these variations and most likely it going to have to be the Ports once it is government’s fault for the delays.
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26 Responses to “‘Who to pay for Cruise Pier Project delays?’ – Hon. Andrew A. Fahie”
Also, each week that goes by without the ships coming in, government is losing all those head taxes. That should also be figured into the overall cost of the project. Capital losses due to delays is real money gone from the treasury.
Stop please you cracking me up now J....n who, you mean G...on.
ref biwater some of us might be surprised to know the truth behind the biwater project; unlike most of us i do not have to sit here defending bulls..t for the vip or ndp; biwater have our country in for fourty two million dollars, yes some of us invested money in to the cruise project but investment of your money does not guarantee you financial profit on the money. rather than defending the actions of those elected we need to stand up,at this going rate our grandchildren will have nothing in the BVI....I will continue to say ndp/vip same thing....talk that....