Despite completing no more than 20 per cent of the work at the Amelia’s Ward Primary School in Linden, Region 10, the contractor was paid almost 50 per cent of the contracted sum. At least this is according to Opposition Parliamentarian and former Infrastructure Minister, David Patterson.
The Member of Parliament (MP) took to his Facebook page several days ago to raise concerns over the sloth of the project and the alleged overpayment.
He said that St8ment Investment Inc. was awarded the $346M contract on November 8, 2021, to construct the school, eight months after it was incorporated. He listed the company’s principals as Rawle Ferguson and Kerwin Bollers of Hits and Jams Entertainment along with Aubrey ‘Shanghai’ Major and Kashif Muhammed of the Kashif and Shanghai Football Tournament.
The contract duration, Patterson said, is 20 months, which means that the project’s deadline is slated for July 2023. However, he alleges that “almost” half of the contracted sum, which translates to around $173M, has already been doled out to the company with less than a quarter of the works completed as of January 31, 2023.
Patterson also shared photos of the site, showing foundation works and several columns and “ring beams” in place. With just seven months remaining before the deadline, Patterson expressed doubt that the project will be completed in time. He also raised concerns about the purported inexperience of the company.
The MP noted that during the examination of the estimates, the government “made light of the issues raised, preferring to comment on the oversight by a regional MP as to the actual time that elapsed, as opposed to responding when will this project be finally completed and if they deem the project to be providing value for money to Region 10”.
He added, “More and more, I am convinced that GT is not a real place, where a company whose only previous experience was hosting pageants and football tournaments can be awarded a multi-million building contract – and the PPP supporters simply see this as a meme-worthy issue.”
