Austrian contractor VAMED Engineering on Friday again accused the Ministry of Health of withholding payment for certified work and failing to authorise the release of construction materials from Guyana’s ports, saying those delays helped leave two hospital projects unfinished.
The company was awarded contracts in 2022 to build the Maternal and Paediatric Hospital at Ogle, East Coast Demerara, and a new hospital complex at New Amsterdam, Berbice. The government has previously rejected VAMED’s account, saying persistent delays, inadequate mobilisation and failure to comply with contractual requirements led it to terminate both contracts.
VAMED’s representative in Guyana, Dr João Pedro da Silva Teles, said in a statement that the ministry’s handling of payments, approvals and material clearances had impeded construction.
“When a government stops paying a contractor for work its own engineers have certified, when critical construction materials are prevented from leaving the ports, and when one bureaucratic obstacle after another is placed in the contractor’s path, the resulting delays cannot simply be blamed on the company trying to do the work,” Teles said.
VAMED said the projects were governed by the 2017 FIDIC Yellow Book, a standard framework for design-and-build contracts. It said it was responsible for designing and building the hospitals, while the government and its appointed engineer had responsibilities for administering the contracts, certifying payments and facilitating approvals. The company asked what training and procedures the ministry had put in place to administer the contracts, citing President Irfaan Ali’s remarks at the July 2022 groundbreaking that the framework was new to Guyana.
The contractor also pointed to its previous hospital projects, including the Sangre Grande Hospital Campus in Trinidad and Tobago, and recalled that Health Minister Dr Frank Anthony had cited its international experience in the National Assembly in February 2023.
Kiskadee Watch reported on October 29 that VAMED had alleged that the government-appointed engineer, VIKAB, issued interim payment certificates for completed work on the maternal and paediatric hospital but that the ministry failed to process the payment authorisations. VAMED also alleged that the government allowed the project’s British-backed financing agreement to expire in November 2025 without renewing it or informing the company.
VAMED said ongoing international arbitration limited what it could disclose publicly. It said it remained willing to discuss how to complete the hospitals if outstanding contractual, financial and operational issues were addressed.
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