By Jomo Paul
[www.inewsguyana.com] – Several hours after Vice Chairman of the Alliance For Change, Nigel Hughes made some startling revelations about the controversial Marriott Hotel Project, authorities have said that this is not the case.
Hughes in a Facebook post on Monday said that “reports indicate that the Marriot Hotel Project is in trouble.”
According to Hughes, after having rejected the Guyanese work force as being inadequately equipped and uncompetitive, the foreign company which provided the contracting services for the Hotel have been asked to leave the project after they failed a recent inspection evaluation by the brand owner.
He said that a “prominent local contracting company of long standing along with its local labour force have been retained to effect remedial works and complete the project.The opening which was scheduled for April is no longer a realistic option.”
But Chairman of the National Industrial and Commercial Investments Limited (NICIL), Winston Brassington later rebuffed the statement claiming this was not the case.
In a comment on the same post, Brassington said that Shanghai Construction Group, which is the group currently working on the Marriott have not been asked to leave.
He explained that “SCG, the Chinese contractor is the contractor on site and fully so. Over the last year, increasing use of local inputs have been made with our support. The use of a local contractor firm to assist with completing the punch list is on-going, particularly since there was a reduction of the Chinese work force during the Chinese New Year celebrations, recently concluded.”
The punch list being referred to by Brassington is a contract agreement, usually written to allow the owner the final payment to the general contractor as “retainage”.
The contractor is bound by the contract to complete a punch list of uncompleted contract items in order to receive final payment from the owner.
The designer of the project is usually also incorporated into the contract as the owner’s design representative and agent, to verify that completed contract work has complied with the design.
According to the NICIL Chairman, it is no secret that local firms are being used on the project, but those firms have been used intermittently for a considerable amount of time.
“Marriott is already training over 150 staff members at the hotel who occupy many of the sections and the hotel will open shortly. All parties involved have recognized the high quality of work that has been executed by the contractor; it is quite usual for a punch list to be produced at the end and these works remedied, which is what is largely occurring inside the hotel,” Brassington elaborated.
