Rhon­dor Dowlat

Ques­tions are be­ing asked about whether or not $1.6 mil­lion a month was spent to lease a he­li­copter from Briko Air Ser­vices by the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NOC) un­der the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment.

The is­sue is be­ing raised as Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cials go though con­trac­tu­al arrange­ments en­tered in­to by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Among the is­sues was whether it was cost ef­fi­cient to lease a he­li­copter at such a fee when the NOC could have pur­sued the op­tion of buy­ing a sec­ond hand air­craft and who gave the in­struc­tion to en­ter the lease arrange­ments, since it is al­leged the go ahead came from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in 2011.

The T&T Guardian un­der­stands the he­li­copter was leased from Au­gust 12, 2011 to Jan­u­ary 24. Dur­ing that pe­ri­od, ac­cord­ing to the log re­ports, the time used for the air­craft to­talled 149 hours and 10 min­utes.

"Why was this he­li­copter leased from a pri­vate firm when the gov­ern­ment could have se­cured a used he­li­copter with less air­frame and en­gine time for any­where be­tween US$450,000 to US$700,000? The cost of the lease of this Briko he­li­copter, I am sure, far ex­ceed­ed the cost they would have spent on pur­chas­ing a used air­craft. All this is tax­pay­ers' mon­ey be­ing abused and/or wast­ed," an avi­a­tion source said.

Sources claimed for­mer NOC op­er­a­tions di­rec­tor Garvin Heer­ah and for­mer deputy di­rec­tor of the NOC Air Di­vi­sion Ma­jor Paul Brown, who was a mem­ber of the De­fence Force in Ja­maica, knew about the leas­ing of the he­li­copter.

Ac­cord­ing to re­ports, the he­li­copter, which was once reg­is­tered as 9Y-DAS, was al­leged­ly al­tered to D-reg­is­tered, mean­ing it was tak­en out of civ­il avi­a­tion reg­is­tra­tion, re­paint­ed and sent to the NOC and was fly­ing as NOC 6. The re-paint­ing of the air­craft al­leged­ly breached civ­il avi­a­tion laws, which state that once an air­craft is re-paint­ed and ex­ceeds more than two per cent of its gross weight it has to be re-weighed be­cause a change of paint would af­fect the weight and bal­ance. The air­craft was not re-weighed.

The T&T Guardian was told that Heer­ah and Brown knew about the re-paint­ing of the air­craft from its orig­i­nal blue and white colour to black with a red stripe Brown, who ini­tial­ly worked as a pi­lot at the Na­tion­al He­li­copter Ser­vices Lim­it­ed (NHSL), was en­rolled in the NOC in 2013 but was asked to re­sign about six months ago. An NHSL Op­er­a­tions Ser­vices of­fi­cial said Brown is still based at NOC, Cu­mu­to, but as chief pi­lot for NHSL.

An avi­a­tion in­dus­try source said the same he­li­copter, a 1988 Eu­ro­copter AS355F2, re­port­ed­ly had "a hard land­ing" on Sep­tem­ber 4–three days be­fore the Sep­tem­ber 7 gen­er­al elec­tions–at an undis­closed lo­ca­tion and is now be­ing housed in a hang­er at Briko's Air Ser­vices com­pound at Cam­den, Cou­va. It is al­so al­leged that Briko Air Ser­vices is seek­ing fi­nan­cial com­pen­sa­tion for the air­craft from Gov­ern­ment.

The T&T Guardian un­der­stands the air­craft was al­so post­ed up for sale on the Air­craft Shop­per On­line and is still there on the web site www.aso.com. The specs in­clude the word­ing: "No Dam­age His­to­ry and Good Class."The avi­a­tion source said be­fore the lease was signed for the he­li­copter, there were plans to pur­chase five he­li­copters from US-based Bell He­li­copter.

Con­tact­ed on the mat­ter, then na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Gary Grif­fith con­firmed that he knew that the 9Y-DAS was changed to D-reg­is­ter, re­paint­ed and leased to the NOC. He, how­ev­er, said he did not know the cost of the lease which was done through the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, as the NOC falls un­der its purview.

Asked whether or not he knew there was a $6 mil­lion bind­ing con­trac­tu­al agree­ment be­tween the NOC and Briko per­tain­ing to the lease, Grif­fith replied: "No, not that I am aware of."Grif­fith, how­ev­er, added that at that point it was crit­i­cal for the NOC to get a he­li­copter.

"The NOC had sev­er­al he­li­copters be­fore but all of them were used by the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit of T&T (SAUTT) and were over 30 years old, and be­cause the Air Guard need­ed a he­li­copter the quick­est thing to do at that time was to lease the he­li­copter from Briko be­cause the NOC's op­er­a­tions were at the time crip­pled," Grif­fith said.

He said around that time they were await­ing ap­proval for the pur­chase of the five he­li­copters and "there were ten­ders from three com­pa­nies, in­clud­ing Bell and Copter­Shop."

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day for com­ment, Briko Air Ser­vices chair­man Har­riper­sad Dass would on­ly say that the he­li­copter had an in­ci­dent and it is cur­rent­ly be­ing fixed in ac­cor­dance with civ­il avi­a­tion laws. He added that it was un­der the care of the NOC and could not com­ment fur­ther.

The he­li­copter is cur­rent­ly un­der­go­ing in­spec­tion by the Main­te­nance Man­u­al and once that is com­plet­ed it will be sent back to the NOC, af­ter it is checked through and signed off by Briko Air Ser­vices and Civ­il Avi­a­tion, the T&T Guardian un­der­stands. It was al­so con­firmed that the lease has not ex­pired and is cur­rent­ly on­go­ing un­der a long-term agree­ment be­tween NOC and Briko Air Ser­vices.

Yes­ter­day, Heer­ah said al­though he did not have all the nec­es­sary in­for­ma­tion read­i­ly avail­able on the lease be­tween Briko Air Ser­vices and the NOC, he knew for sure that what­ev­er was done to the air­craft was done in guid­ance of Civ­il Avi­a­tion Reg­is­tra­tion.

"All pro­to­cols and due dili­gence was con­duct­ed pri­or to the es­tab­lish­ment of the lease, I can say that for a fact be­cause I know. The air­craft was checked out by ex­perts from both NOC and Briko Air Ser­vices," Heer­ah said.

Asked whether or not he knew an of­fi­cial's close rel­a­tive was al­leged­ly giv­en free train­ing as part of the lease's con­di­tions, Heer­ah on­ly said: "As part of the lease Briko of­fered train­ing and main­te­nance. Train­ing would have been to get fa­mil­iarised and get ac­quaint­ed on the air­craft. This is what was called a gen­tle­man's agree­ment, which I think was writ­ten on the lease."

Asked if he could con­firm if the lease for the he­li­copter was $1.6 mil­lion a month, Heer­ah said he knows it was $1 mil­lion a month but could not give the spe­cif­ic fig­ure. He said the cost fac­tor was in ac­cor­dance with in­ter­na­tion­al stan­dards.Asked whether or not he knew that the same unit hard-land­ed in Sep­tem­ber this year, Heer­ah de­nied any knowl­edge of this.

Con­tact­ed for com­ment, cur­rent NOC head Sar­wan Boodram asked what the in­ter­view about. Af­ter be­ing told he said he was re­strict­ed from an­swer­ing cer­tain things. He said he would at­tempt to call back on the top­ic but nev­er did.

Ef­forts to reach the cur­rent Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Ed­mund Dil­lon over the last few days were un­suc­cess­ful, as calls to his cell phone went unan­swered.

Con­tract signed for Bell 429s

On March 4, 2015, Bell He­li­copter, a Tex­tron Inc. com­pa­ny (NYSE: TXT), an­nounced the sale of four Bell 429s con­fig­ured for air­borne law en­force­ment (ALE) and one Bell 412EPI con­fig­ured for search and res­cue to the NOC. The con­tract was signed by then NOC op­er­a­tions di­rec­tor Garvin Heer­ah.

Ac­cord­ing to the Air­force As­so­ci­a­tion's web­site, the Bell 429 of­fers the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy by pro­vid­ing the best com­bi­na­tion of speed, pay­load, range, and cab­in size, cou­pled with the lat­est safe­ty im­prove­ments. It al­so of­fers ex­cep­tion­al flight per­for­mance with a ful­ly in­te­grat­ed glass cock­pit, ad­vanced dri­ve sys­tem and best-in-class WAAS nav­i­ga­tion and IFR ca­pa­bil­i­ty. It is the first he­li­copter cer­ti­fied through the MSG-3 process, re­sult­ing in re­duced main­te­nance costs for op­er­a­tors.

The Bell 429 al­so fea­tures a spa­cious cab­in and ex­tra large 60-inch side doors, as well as In­stru­ment Flight Rules (IFR) ca­pa­bil­i­ty cer­ti­fied for sin­gle or dual pi­lot op­er­a­tions.

Dif­fer­ent 'copter used by for­mer PM

The NOC6 was not used to trans­port for­mer prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to var­i­ous events dur­ing her tenure. The avi­a­tion source said an­oth­er unit, the NOC 5, was used for that pur­pose.The source said the air­craft used by Per­sad-Bisses­sar was ini­tial­ly a search and res­cue unit and it was re­fur­bished for com­mer­cial use by the then PM.