– fourth contractor now on the job
Skepticism is mounting whether or not the Lonsdale, East Bank Berbice koker and revetment would ever be completed.
According to residents in the area, the fourth contractor is now trying to complete the job and repair a huge section of the revetment which collapsed a few days ago.
“The engineer who built this [structure] want some jail or something,” said a resident who requested anonymity. According to another resident, the Region 6 Administration was not satisfied with the shoddy works on the structure and the contractor (name given), who hails from Mahaicony, was mandated to do proper works.
Kaieteur News spoke with the koker attendant, K. Sookai, who expressed his concerns about the shaky steel frame of the koker. He pointed to one piece of wood that makes up the walkway atop the steel frame and said that it is dangerous to maneuver.
The attendant also said that it is very difficult for him to work at nights on the steel frame since it is dark. He is calling for a streetlight or two to be erected along the area.
Residents told this newspaper that construction on the koker first started in February 2011 and since then no contractor managed to complete it.
The contractors (names given) all failed to satisfy the requirements specified by the engineers and a fourth contractor took over the works in December.
Recently, the entire left section of the revetment collapsed.
Lonsdale runs along the East Bank Berbice corridor on the Berbice River and the sluice is one of the major ones in the area. It is operated on a 24-hour basis because of the volume of water, draining water from the rice, cattle and cash crop areas.
Another concerned resident stated that the revetment would not have collapsed if the contractors had listened to residents in the area. The resident noted that the East Bank corridor is a swampy and ‘soft’ area. “We tell the contractor that it’s a swampy area; they didn’t listen to residents!” “Just two showers of rain and the piles started to break”.
“They [the contractor] came last week and took out the piles (that collapsed)”.