Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

A due dili­gence re­view ex­e­cut­ed by the Cana­di­an Com­mer­cial Cor­po­ra­tion to de­ter­mine SNC Lavalin's el­i­gi­bil­i­ty to build the $1 bil­lion Pe­nal hos­pi­tal and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­tre will be com­plet­ed by the end of next week, says Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal.Speak­ing at his Debe con­stituen­cy of­fice yes­ter­day, Mooni­lal said the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to view with con­cern the de­ci­sion of the Cana­di­an au­thor­i­ties to ap­point SNC Lavalin to de­sign the hos­pi­tal.

Mooni­lal de­nied that the T&T Gov­ern­ment was em­broiled in a con­tro­ver­sial multi­bil­lion-dol­lar con­tract with SNC Lavalin, a com­pa­ny which was banned from bid­ding on con­tracts fund­ed by the World Bank in April this year."Con­trary to what is be­ing said in the pub­lic do­main and on the blogs, we are not in­volved in a mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar deal with SNC Lavalin," he said.

"The hos­pi­tal project is done in phas­es. Phase One in­volves the sub­stan­tia­tive de­sign and tech­ni­cal work. SNC Lavalin has been con­tract­ed for that. That has cost us $2.2 mil­lion so there is no multi­bil­lion-dol­lar arrange­ment."He added that the Gov­ern­ment plans to end Phase One soon and then re­view its re­la­tion­ship with the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment for Phase Two.

"It may in­volve ask­ing the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment to se­lect an­oth­er con­trac­tor which we may feel more com­fort­able with, giv­en all the cir­cum­stances but that is a de­ci­sion that the Ude­cott board has to ad­dress," Mooni­lal said."I have man­dat­ed the Ude­cott board to re­view the arrange­ment with the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment and the role of SNC Lavalin in the fu­ture of the hos­pi­tal project."

Say­ing that the Gov­ern­ment has had con­cerns with SNC Lavalin's track record and cur­rent sta­tus, Mooni­lal said once the due dili­gence re­view is com­plet­ed, gov­ern­ment will make a de­ci­sion on whether SNC Lavalin will build the hos­pi­tal.He said the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship will con­tin­ue to have a gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ment with Cana­da.

Mooni­lal al­so dis­agreed that gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ments were detri­men­tal of the coun­try. He said the gov­ern­ment had em­barked on a new phase of these arrange­ments, in which lo­cal con­tent was un­der­scored. He said un­der such con­tracts, the con­trac­tor had an oblig­a­tion to use 50 per cent lo­cal con­tent.

Mooni­lal said the work­force for the $7.5 bil­lion high­way was 90 per cent lo­cal. He added that lo­cal ma­te­ri­als and sub-con­trac­tors ben­e­fit­ted from such arrange­ments. Mooni­lal said he planned to li­aise with the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the con­struc­tion in­dus­try and the Lo­cal Con­tent Cham­ber to dis­cuss their con­tent.

Mean­while, Pres­i­dent and Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Cana­di­an Com­mer­cial Cor­po­ra­tion Marc Whit­ting­ton says T&T is ben­e­fit­ing from com­pet­i­tive in­ter­est rates, and tech­nol­o­gy trans­fers be­cause of its gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ment with Cana­da.In a state­ment yes­ter­day, Whit­ting­ton said the CCC has played a key role in brin­ing to­geth­er a fi­nanc­ing sce­nario for the project.

"Con­se­quent­ly, the fi­nanc­ing pack­age has been able to at­tract in­ter­est rates that are very com­pet­i­tive and are in fact low­er than what would be con­sid­ered gen­er­al com­mer­cial rates," he said.

He added that "al­though the ex­act terms and de­tails are not avail­able as the fi­nanc­ing has not been fi­nalised, it is clear that a gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment arrange­ment with the Cana­di­an gov­ern­ment will con­tin­ue to of­fer fi­nan­cial ad­van­tages to T&T as the in­volve­ment of the CCC and pos­si­bly oth­er Cana­di­an agen­cies of­ten re­sults in low­er in­ter­est rates and pref­er­en­tial con­di­tions in the fi­nanc­ing pack­age."

Whit­ting­ton al­so said there will be ben­e­fits to lo­cals in terms of tech­nol­o­gy trans­fers, train­ing, and cor­po­rate so­cial re­spon­si­bil­i­ty."Lo­cal ben­e­fits to be re­alised un­der the Pe­nal project are still be­ing de­fined with­in the pro­pos­al," he said.How­ev­er, it is clear that lo­cal ex­per­tise and knowl­edge will be gained through train­ing on med­ical equip­ment op­er­a­tions and ex­pe­ri­ence with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards for the con­struc­tion and op­er­a­tions of health care fa­cil­i­ties," Whit­ting­ton added.

Mooni­lal al­so said the Gov­ern­ment want­ed to cre­ate a skilled work­force by en­cour­ag­ing the trans­fer of knowl­edge."We want to cre­ate a labour force that could one day build a hos­pi­tal by them­selves with­out the help of any oth­er gov­ern­ment or group of work­ers out­side of T&T," he said.