QAII refutes misleading Kaieteur News report

 – says it gets water from its ‘own well’

The Queens Atlantic Investment Incorporated (QAII) has refuted claims that it owe the state-owned Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI) millions of dollars in water bills, declaring that it is not (and never was) a customer of GWI.

A report in today’s Kaieteur News, under the caption ‘No evidence that Ramroop Ruimveldt Complex is a GWI customer’,  went on to claim that the state-owned Guyana Water Incorporated (GWI) has started investigations on the Ruimveldt property owned and controlled by Dr. Ranjisinghi ‘Bobby’ Ramroop.

As a result of this erroneous publication, QAII made the following facts clear:

• The well which is located at Ruimveldt is owned by QAII.
• GWI (or its predecessor companies) has never owned the well.
• Like many industrial operations, large complexes have their own well and operate these independently of GWI.
• QAII has always sought to be a good citizen and has maintained that there is an arrangement where the water from the well can be accessed for GWI usage
• Security, rates and taxes, etc. for the entire Sanata operations are borne SOLELY BY QAII

It noted, too, that GWI staff only showed up and sought to interrogate QAII employees, “on the day that a QAII related company, Guyana Times, broke the story identifying the GWI CEO  was granted a license to import and export fuel .

QAII said it can only assume this action was in retaliation to the article carried by its newspaper, the Guyana Times.

Over the years, the well and the environs have always been recognized as being under private ownership, and are currently owned by QAII.  QAII said it will continue to pursue a good relationship with GWI for shared access to the water resources of the well.

Today, QAII water use is not commercial and is insignificant. In fact, most of the water is being used by GWI.  And for the record, QAII said it has never been a customer of GWI at this location given that QAII is accessing water from its own well.

QAII remains committed to being a good corporate citizen and will seek to continue to support GWI on its use of the well.

Sanata Textiles rehab

Meanwhile, in the same article carried by the Kaieteur News today, the allegation that  Government spent some US$5M to rehabilitate the Sanata Textiles Complex before it was sold to QAII at a cost of US$3.4M was repeated.

But QAII Executive Chairman, Dr Ramroop, maintained that the information being published by the Kaieteur News is “inaccurate and false”.

“I want to state categorically that after the lease, the Government of Guyana did not spend a single cent on the clean-up or any other expense that went into rehabilitating or reconstruction of any of the buildings,” Dr Ramroop declared.

He explained that Kaieteur News has been peddling the lie that millions were spent since 2008 when the Guyana Times  newspaper was launched.

The fact is all repairs, rehabilitation and other works were done by the QAII Group to the tune of  millions of dollars, after acquisition of the lease as the Complex at the time of privatisation was in a state of disrepair.