Aecon, the Canadian company that was awarded a US$170 million contract from the government of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines to build a modernized cargo port, lied to Calliaqua fishermen when they said importing materials for the deep-water harbor was a second option.
Tam Smith, Aecon Group’s senior project manager, told the fishermen that importing sand from St. Lucia, Barbados, or Suriname was a second option if the materials were not readily available in St. Vincent.
However, on Sunday, Prime Minister Ralph Gonsalves, speaking to the ongoing issue, said otherwise and clearly contradicted what Smith had told the fishermen.
“I told Laura Browne and Lenski Douglas, who are the two main persons on the project’s implementation, that Aecon should be informed that they should spend a lot of time on what was their plan A, which was to get there material from outside of St. Vincent and the Grenadines so that there would be no delay on the project”.
“That is what they had bid on, getting the material from outside St. Vincent,” Gonsalves said. The Caribbean Development Bank (CDB) and the government both accepted that proposal.
“It is not unusual that if you bid that you could get the material from a particular place and then you think you can get it somewhere else, that’s fine; you will be saving money, so if you’re saving money, you can’t make additional profit by taking it from here.”
Gonsalves said on Sunday, February 5, that the St. Vincent and the Grenadines government had not granted any permission to Aecon to dredge for sand south of Argyle Airport.
“As of today, Sunday, February 5, the prime minister of this country is not persuaded as of this moment that the permission should be granted.” “I want to give everyone a fair hearing, and that includes the fishermen,” Gonsalves said.
Smith told fishermen at a consultation in Calliaqua on February 2 that the Physical Planning Division had approved a dredging permit for Aecon to take 1.17 million cubic meters of sand from an area 820 yards south of and 550 yards from the Argyle International Airport.
“Dredging works will be carried out over a 10-week period if the weather is favorable. “We would commence in the middle of March 2023 and should be completed by May 2023,” Smith said.
Gonsalves said he wanted to take away the confused thinking that says, “Here are foreigners coming to take our material and buy our material and take it somewhere; they are not taking it anywhere; they are putting it back here in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, but where they want to take it from may have implications.”
