Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Giv­en the po­lit­i­cal heat sur­round­ing Ish Gal­barans­ingh and al­le­ga­tions of bribery over Sec­tion 34, se­nior mem­bers of Gov­ern­ment are still in­sist­ing he re­mains free to bid for State projects.

Gal­barans­ingh won the bid for the con­struc­tion of the $14 mil­lion Brick­field Pack­ing House which was opened on Mon­day in Tabaquite. His com­pa­ny Aztec As­phalt Pavers Ltd was re­spon­si­ble for com­plet­ing the fa­cil­i­ty in record time.

In an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Works Min­is­ter Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan said he did not agree that the UNC should dis­tance it­self from Gal­barans­ingh and his com­pa­ny in light of al­le­ga­tions by ILP leader Jack Warn­er that busi­ness­man Steve Fer­gu­son al­leged­ly paid $8 mil­lion in bribes to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Warn­er was ex­pect­ed to pro­vide ev­i­dence of the al­leged bribes in a press con­fer­ence yes­ter­day but it was post­poned.

In an email, Warn­er said an ad­di­tion­al piece of in­for­ma­tion had sur­faced and need­ed to be ver­i­fied. He al­so said the in­clement weath­er would pose a dif­fi­cul­ty for some per­sons who wished to at­tend the press con­fer­ence.

Gal­barans­ingh, in an in­ter­view, said his at­tor­neys were re­view­ing Warn­er's ac­cu­sa­tions.

How­ev­er, Ram­bachan said de­spite the is­sue, Gal­barans­ingh should not be banned from bid­ding for projects.

"Those were pub­lic bids and if Gal­barans­ingh wins the bid, he can­not be de­nied be­cause he is free to bid and ten­der for any project," Ram­bachan said.

He added: "I don't think the UNC should dis­tance them­selves from him at all. He had a com­pa­ny that was ex­ist­ing way be­fore and af­ter the Pi­ar­co air­port project."

Ram­bachan could not pro­vide de­tails of the ten­der­ing process and di­rect­ed ques­tions to Food Pro­duc­tion Min­is­ter De­vant Ma­haraj.

Con­tact­ed on his cell­phone yes­ter­day, Ma­haraj said he al­so dis­agreed with the no­tion that Gal­barans­ingh should be side­lined be­cause of the al­le­ga­tions.

He added: "As far as I am aware his com­pa­ny ten­dered like every­body else. What­ev­er ten­der rules ex­ist­ed he emerged as the suc­cess­ful bid­der.

"Why should we dis­tance our­selves? Is it that he is not al­lowed to do busi­ness in Trinidad? Should we ter­mi­nate any projects for which he has won a bid?

"What is the ba­sis of the dis­crim­i­na­tion against him. If we do this we can open up our­selves to lit­i­ga­tion?" Ma­haraj asked.

He al­so de­nied knowl­edge of the ten­der­ing process, say­ing it was han­dled by the Na­tion­al Agri­cul­tur­al Mar­ket­ing and De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Namde­v­co).

"The de­tails of im­ple­men­ta­tion and ex­e­cu­tion was done by Namde­v­co. I didn't even know Gal­barans­ingh's com­pa­ny was do­ing this project," Ma­haraj said.

He di­rect­ed ques­tions to Namde­v­co's CEO Ganesh Gan­gaper­sad, who as­sured that Aztec Pavers won the con­tract be­cause it had the low­est bid.

He said he was out of of­fice and could not pro­vide de­tails of the ten­ders but would do so when he got in of­fice to­day.