— full investigation into neglect to be launched
JUNIOR Finance Minister, Jaipaul Sharma, is expected to recommend to Cabinet a full investigation into the Skeldon Modernisation Project, contending that the project has been plagued by corruption and mismanagement.
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Speaking on a tour of the factory, Sharma said the project was expected to save sugar but it has achieved the opposite.
GuySuCo chairman, Professor Clive Thomas had previously described the facility as a “ticking time bomb”, an assertion the opposition PPP has dismissed as political propaganda.
“I am happy the media is here today and like myself can see first-hand the type of damage and level of deterioration that the professor was talking about,” Sharma told reporters on Friday.
Skeldon Energy Inc (SEI) has indicated as a stop gap measure, it is investing US$2.5M to make the plant operational by the end of August.
And, it will then spend a whopping US$17M from January 2018 to effect a complete rehabilitation of its facilities. This rehabilitation work is expected
to be done over a three-to-four-month period.
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“It is a stop gap measure to buy time because ultimately the solution to the problem is the replacement of one boiler in the place of where the two boilers are,” SEI Chairman Lloyd Rose said.
The management of SCI recommended the closure of the facility earlier in the year over safety concerns regarding the boilers, forcing the Skeldon factory to halt operation until the second crop.
No cane was processed for the first crop and management is hoping that the repairs can be completed in time for the second crop in September.
During the tour, management and staff of SEI pointed to the damaged boilers and the works being done on other sections of the facility.
BIGGEST INVESTMENT
The SEI said the US$200M Skeldon project, the country’s biggest investment, has found itself in a perilous state due to poor design, poor management, lack of training and oversight.
According to Rose, the pinhole boiler is not suited for local conditions as he explained its deterioration in a short period of time.
“We have found here, the type of grate we have here is being overwhelmed by the amount of ash obtained from the actual outturn simply because of the amount of sand, mud and silt that comes in with the canes after a brief rainfall even during the dry season.”
Rose said the conditions under which the canes come in cannot be changed. Even though workers have tried, the pinholes become blocked due to the excessive ash content, making normal operations difficult and requiring more maintenance.
This, he said should have been considered in the initial design stages to avoid the current situation.
“We have a mixture of several things; there clearly were several design deficiencies; we talked about one. There was an issue of proper maintenance, there is no doubt about that, the maintenance did not live up to proper standards that are expected for this type of plant, and of course, we have the issue of the proper training and operational oversight of the process,” the SEI chairman said.
NEVER WORKED
He said he can go on about the issues affecting the plant, but noted that the main issue is the design and the fact that there are some components that never worked since their installation.
“But to be fair, the thing that overshadows all of that is the design issues and the pinhole grate (boiler) is only one and we have cases where many other things that were installed, like the electromagnetic facilitator and things like that, never really worked in the first
place and we can go on and on but there were many design deficiencies that had they been corrected earlier, perhaps we could have had a very different results but they were so, now you know the result of their actions.”
Minister Jaipaul said some simple design flaws which could have been remedied earlier by the previous administration were not given due attention.
He made mention of the shed covering boilers One and Two that left the boilers exposed to the weather, causing external damage. He was also puzzled as to why when the defects were identified, it was not remedied during the defects liability period of the contract.
The minister is keen to find out who signed off on the approval, despite some of
these defects being identified within the said period.
Actom John Thompson Company of South Africa has been contracted to
effect repairs to the boiler and SEI is looking at several options as it relates to funding for the estimated US$17M for next year to complete rehabilitation works.
Rose said the SEI has also completed a business plan and based on projections, the company is expected to be a very viable one and can easily acquire the funds and would not necessarily go to government for support.
