Rishard Khan

rishard.khan@guardian.co.tt

Chair­man of Ramps Lo­gis­tics’ Guyana board Shaun Ram­per­sad is call­ing on the Guyanese gov­ern­ment for an­swers on why the com­pa­ny’s lo­cal con­tent cer­tifi­cate ap­pli­ca­tion was de­nied.

Dur­ing a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Ram­per­sad said all nec­es­sary doc­u­ments were sub­mit­ted to the sec­re­tari­at to prove their com­pli­ance with the lo­cal con­tent laws.

“Af­ter we did all of this, the on­ly thing that we got out of the lo­cal con­tent sec­re­tari­at was an au­to­mat­ed email that says you have been de­nied ac­cess to the lo­cal con­tent reg­istry. That’s it,” Ram­per­sad said.

He said de­spite mak­ing calls and send­ing let­ters through at­tor­neys, all the T&T-based com­pa­ny re­ceived was “stone-cold si­lence.”

“We are kind­ly ask­ing the sec­re­tari­at to please tell us what we need to do, why we’ve been de­nied and how we could fix that,” Ram­per­sad said.

Al­though ini­tial­ly a T&T com­pa­ny, he said they di­vest­ed 51 per cent of the com­pa­ny’s shares to Guyanese na­tion­al Deep­ak Lall for 210 mil­lion Guyanese dol­lars. Ram­per­sad ex­plained that while Lall’s fa­ther and grand­fa­ther were born and raised in Guyana, he was born in T&T but re­ceived a Guyanese pass­port in 2021.

Ram­per­sad dis­missed per­cep­tions that this was done to cir­cum­nav­i­gate the Guyanese lo­cal con­tent laws, which re­quire that com­pa­nies be ma­jor­i­ty-owned by a na­tion­al in or­der to ser­vice the oil and gas in­dus­try.

“Based on the way Guyana is go­ing, the biggest thing that can cat­a­pult Guyana is to get back the best and the bright­est in­to Guyana to bring their cap­i­tal in­to Guyana, to bring their skills in­to Guyana and to bring their net­work in­to Guyana. I feel like if there’s some­body with deep Guyanese roots and he’s will­ing to in­vest sig­nif­i­cant sums of mon­ey in­to Guyana, we should do every­thing to bring those types of folks back to Guyana,” he said.

“I don’t feel like Deep­ak get­ting his pass­port in 2021 is some­thing of a con­ve­nience, I think it’s a re­al big op­por­tu­ni­ty for him to start in­vest­ing in Guyana.”

Ram­per­sad said the com­pa­ny hopes it doesn’t reach the point where it has to go through the courts on the mat­ter. He said with­out the cer­tifi­cate, Ramps will not leave Guyana but will have to dis­con­tin­ue ser­vic­ing the oil and gas sec­tor, which is its biggest rev­enue earn­er.

“We will ac­tu­al­ly have to trim down some of our staff, yes and that’s the part that I’m wor­ried about,” he said.