Opposition Member of Parliament Ganesh Mahipaul is demanding that the Government disclose what has happened with the process to salvage the sunken MV Barima, as 16 days have now elapsed after the deadline for Expressions of Interest (EOIs) closed.
Mahipaul said the public is still being kept in the dark about the number of companies that submitted EOIs, how many satisfied the evaluation requirements, how many were shortlisted and whether a contractor has already been selected or engaged. He is also demanding to know when the actual salvage operation will begin.
Mahipaul said he has formally written to the Minister responsible for Public Utilities and Aviation, Deodat Indar seeking the information but has received no response.
On August 25, Mahipaul had previously raised similar concerns, 10 days after the August 14 deadline for Expressions of Interest. At that time, President Irfaan Ali had said the Government received submissions from an estimated 10 or more companies and that shortlisting was underway.
Prime Minister Mark Phillips had also said the submissions would first have to be evaluated before a contractor was selected and negotiations undertaken.
“The public has a right to know,” Mahipaul said in a statement yesterday, listing the number of submissions, the number that met the evaluation criteria, the number shortlisted, whether a company has been selected and when salvage will begin among the questions requiring answers.
The Government’s decision to proceed with a public EOI process came after an earlier proposal to leave the wreck on the seabed and potentially designate it as a memorial. In fact, relatives of missing passengers had been given a document titled “Declaration of Agreement – MV Barima as Memorial Site”, asking them to indicate whether they agreed that the wreck should remain undisturbed as the final resting place of those still missing.
Phillips subsequently said that families would decide whether the vessel should be raised or the site designated as a memorial. The Government later moved toward salvaging the vessel as families and other stakeholders called for its recovery.
The process was further complicated by reports concerning Dutch maritime company KMS.
On August 7, MARAD publicly denied that a company had already been selected to salvage the MV Barima. The department said the contractor would be chosen through an ongoing public procurement process and rejected suggestions that any entity had already been selected or was being considered outside that process.
However, Kiskadee Watch had reported that it had reviewed extracts from a KMS document which stated that the company had been invited by the Government, through MARAD, to submit a proposal for the righting and recovery of the ferry. The proposal reportedly offered to recover the MV Barima intact for US$8 million, with the operation expected to take between six and seven weeks, depending on weather and the findings of an initial survey.
The proposal involved righting the vessel, lifting it in one piece, placing it on a barge and transporting it to a location in Guyana for examination. KMS said recovering the vessel intact was important because of the ongoing official and legal investigations.
MARAD did not say whether KMS had been approached before the public EOI was issued, nor whether the company’s reported proposal had any bearing on the terms of the subsequent public process.
Mahipaul’s latest questions therefore come as the Government has yet to publicly provide a detailed account of the outcome of the EOI exercise.
“This is not an ordinary procurement exercise,” Mahipaul lamented, pointing to the scale of the tragedy and the families still waiting for answers. “The families deserve answers. The survivors deserve answers. The Guyanese people deserve answers.”
He accused the Government of failing to live up to President Ali’s repeated assurance that “no stone will be left unturned” in dealing with the tragedy. “Surely, the procurement process for salvaging the MV Barima cannot be the stone that has been left unturned.”
He said the Government’s silence is unacceptable and said it must come clean about the status of the salvage operation. “This is not about politics. It is about respect for the lives that were lost,” Mahipaul said.
The MV Barima sank on July 18 while travelling from Georgetown to Port Kaituma, leaving 73 people confirmed dead and approximately 30 others still unaccounted for. Questions have been raised about the vessel’s condition, passenger numbers, cargo loading, crew conduct, safety procedures and Guyana’s maritime regulatory system.
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