City Hall’s restoration deadline pushed back again

Last Updated on Tuesday, 2 January 2024, 17:02 by Denis Chabrol

The more than GY$1 billion restoration of City Hall has been pushed back a second time, and the project is now expected to be finished around mid-2024 because workers have found more deteriorated parts of the colonial wooden structure, City Mayor Alfred Mentore said Monday.

“They gave us a commitment when the job will be completed which is May or June of this year,” he told Demerara Waves Online News.

Works on the imposing dilapidated wooden structure should have been completed in March 2023 but was extended to November 2023.

However, Mayor Mentore said the Trinidad-based contracting company, FIDES, informed him that the new completion date is due to the fact that there was need to acquire materials and variation. “”When they started to treat with members of the building, they realised that this member has to be changed and so on,” he said.

Initially, in September 2021 central government had allocated GY$780 million to rehabilitate the leaky, rotten and dusty City Hall. In 2023, more money was needed, and the National Assembly approved GY$263.2 million in the National Budget.

Mayor Mentore said he was unaware that rehabilitation works have stalled at City Hall located at the corner of Regent Street and Avenue of the Republic. When Demerara Waves Online News visited the worksite on Tuesday, no one was seen.

The European Union (EU) had funded a study by EURO-NET Consulting in 2018 that had estimated restoration works to cost about GYD$1 billion.

The restoration project is a collaboration between the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development, the European Union and the Mayor and City Council. This project will see the use of Guyana’s own resources, including wood and local labour,