The $1.4B Port Kaituma Wharf

Aug 29, 2026 Features / Columnists, The GHK Lall Column

(Kaieteur News) – My position on Hon Minister of Public Works, Juan Edghill relative to the MV Barima tragedy is well known. Calls for his resignation or termination is mistaking a sardine for a shark. The tragedy is bigger than a minister (or two), bigger than the Cabinet. It reaches to the top, encircling all below. All the years of cursing at Guyanese who called for an end to secrecies and coverups led to the MV Barima going down. All the energies expended on twisting facts, concealing how millions and billions were spent, and attacking those who insisted that the many wrongs will come back in the worst way to unnerve Guyanese, came to pass with a hundred dead. Mainly indigenous and Black, mainly poor and without options, but now dead. The head of Minister Edghill is not big enough to fetch the responsibility for that horrendous tragedy. Responsibility belongs at the head table. Not on a secondary contributor to the horror that dispatched 100 to the depths.

On the other hand, the Port Kaituma wharf was directly in his hand, under his constant watch. The correlation is too close to be denied. To spread around. Thus, it is on his head. He should have lost his head. Fired. Soil shifting is shifting from foot to foot. Searching for a peg on which to hang that $1.4 billion snafu that languished for years, without correction. For the enlightenment of Guyanese unfamiliar with that acronym, snafu, it reads this way: situation normal all f—ed up. The Americans coined it. The PPP Govt lined up to claim monopoly ownership of it. What is not f—ed up in this country with the PPP at the helm? The wharf is Minister Edghill’s and he alone. My thinking is unsparing.