Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Jack Warn­er did not act on his own ac­cord when he in­struct­ed the de­mo­li­tion of the High­way Re-route Move­ment's camp, to al­low works to re­sume on the $7.2 bil­lion Point Fortin High­way. In fact, Sun­day Guardian learnt that on­ly two weeks be­fore Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar reshuf­fled her Cab­i­net, Brazil­ian firm Con­stru­to­ra OAS Ltd had is­sued a $3.5 mil­lion claim against the Gov­ern­ment for breach of the con­trac­tu­al agree­ment caused by the pro­test­ers.

Warn­er yes­ter­day ad­mit­ted to Sun­day Guardian that at the time of the de­mo­li­tion, he, along with oth­er Cab­i­net mem­bers, were aware of the claim. "I have copies of the claim in my pos­ses­sion. I knew the com­pa­ny is ask­ing for more than $3 mil­lion for breach of the agree­ment but I did not want that to be the jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for de­mol­ish­ing the camp. The point is those peo­ple were oc­cu­py­ing state lands il­le­gal­ly and they had to be re­moved," Warn­er said.

The firm is de­mand­ing the ad­di­tion­al pay­ment for the de­lay of works at See­baran Dri­ve, caused by the High­way Re-route Move­ment's protest ac­tion. Works ground­ed to a halt on April 21 at the con­struc­tion site. The claim was sub­mit­ted on June 12, cit­ing fi­nan­cial loss­es due to in­ef­fec­tive or idle con­struc­tion equip­ment and labour.

In ad­di­tion, the firm is al­so claim­ing the protests caused con­struc­tion to be pushed in­to the rainy sea­son, which may re­sult in fur­ther de­lays and ad­di­tion­al costs. The pro­test­ers, led by en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh, had pitched a camp along the Debe route of the high­way, ob­struct­ing con­struc­tion and block­ing equip­ment from en­ter­ing the site for sev­er­al weeks, un­til its re­cent de­mo­li­tion two weeks ago. The pro­test­ers are claim­ing that the con­struc­tion pos­es a risk to the en­vi­ron­ment and com­mu­ni­ties would be di­vid­ed.

'Nid­co failed to act'

The firm has al­so tak­en is­sue with the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny's (Nid­co) han­dling of the mat­ter. In its claim, the firm stat­ed Nid­co and oth­er reg­u­la­to­ry agen­cies had failed to re­solve and mit­i­gate the prob­lem that led to the de­lay. In ac­cor­dance with In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion of Con­sult­ing En­gi­neers (FIDIC) re­quire­ments, the con­trac­tor is re­quired to sub­mit a no­tice of claim with sup­port­ing doc­u­ments with­in 42 days of a sit­u­a­tion aris­ing.

Ac­cord­ing to the claim, dat­ed May 2, the firm wrote to Nid­co in­form­ing them about the pro­test­ers and in­di­cat­ing their in­abil­i­ty to con­tin­ue works. Re­quest­ing that Nid­co ad­dress the com­mu­ni­ty's is­sues, the firm stat­ed, "The lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty is still oc­cu­py­ing the right of way with tents and they have ploughed the land and start­ed grow­ing ba­nana and co­conut trees and veg­eta­bles as a mea­sure to de­mar­cate the land. The con­trac­tor re­quest­ed that the em­ploy­er ad­dress these com­mu­ni­ty is­sues and keep the con­trac­tor (OAS) in­formed."

Cit­ing grounds for the ad­di­tion­al pay­ment, the firm not­ed the fol­low­ing:

�2 The con­trac­tor is un­able to car­ry on works in the area, which will im­pact the con­tract as a whole

�2 A lot of large con­struc­tion equip­ment was ei­ther used in­ef­fec­tive­ly or stood idle

�2 Due to the de­lay, earth­works that should have been done in the dry sea­son, be­tween Jan­u­ary 1 and May 31, will now have to be ex­e­cut­ed dur­ing the rainy sea­son.

Kublals­ingh: I will not give up the fight

Show­ing no re­morse for his ac­tions, Kublals­ingh, in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, told Sun­day Guardian that he had no re­grets for his ac­tions and did not in­tend to give up the fight. Kublals­ingh said while he had not seen doc­u­men­ta­tion prov­ing the claim, he said any in­crease in con­struc­tion cost was due to the Gov­ern­ment ig­nor­ing the con­cerns of cit­i­zens.

"We ad­vised the Gov­ern­ment not to pro­ceed with that sec­tion of the high­way and they have re­fused to lis­ten, so the Gov­ern­ment has to bear the cost," Kublals­ingh said. Mean­while, res­i­dents of Debe and en­vi­rons came out in their num­bers yes­ter­day in sup­port of the high­way.

AG: I will vig­or­ous­ly as­sert the rights of the State

Com­ment­ing on the de­vel­op­ment yes­ter­day, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan told Sun­day Guardian that the de­lay of the project has fi­nan­cial im­pli­ca­tions. "I had warned that the State's risk ex­po­sure was quite sig­nif­i­cant, hav­ing re­gard to the mag­ni­tude of this bil­lion-dol­lar project. The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's of­fice is still reel­ing from the fi­nan­cial im­pact of mul­ti­ple claims that I am still un­rav­el­ling to­day. The coun­try can­not af­ford to sim­ply ex­pose it­self and be vul­ner­a­ble to lit­i­ga­tion.

"I in­tend to, there­fore, vig­or­ous­ly as­sert the rights of the State to en­sure that the wider pub­lic in­ter­ests and purse are pro­tect­ed, so the le­gal po­si­tion of the State is not jeop­ar­dised and com­pro­mised be­yond re­demp­tion."