Renu­ka Singh

Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC) pres­i­dent, Afra Ray­mond, has been forced to re­sign af­ter an in­ter­nal rift with two coun­cil mem­bers.

Ray­mond re­signed with im­me­di­ate ef­fect over a month ago af­ter ten­sion with­in the or­gan­i­sa­tion be­came un­bear­able. His res­ig­na­tion has left the JCC head­less and silent on press­ing mat­ters in­clud­ing the eco­nom­ic down­turn and its im­me­di­ate ef­fect on the bil­lion-dol­lar con­struc­tion in­dus­try.

Sev­er­al ques­tions have arisen since Ray­mond's de­par­ture and chief among them is whether po­lit­i­cal crony­ism played a role in his sud­den de­ci­sion to quit the JCC. The Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that an ex­change of let­ters be­tween Ray­mond and new Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) chair­man, Noel Gar­cia, is re­spon­si­ble for the rift among the JCC ex­ec­u­tive that led to Ray­mond be­ing oust­ed from of­fice. Ray­mond pub­licly ques­tioned whether Gar­cia was el­i­gi­ble for a state board ap­point­ment even though he was wide­ly re­port­ed to have failed to ap­pear at the Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the Las Al­turas project.

Las Al­turas, an apart­ment com­plex in La­dy Young, Mor­vant, cost the then gov­ern­ment some $26 mil­lion to con­struct but had to be de­mol­ished when the land slipped and cre­at­ed struc­tur­al dam­age to the build­ing. It was com­mis­sioned and con­struct­ed un­der the for­mer Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) by the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) when Gar­cia stood as the gen­er­al man­ag­er. Gar­cia was ex­pect­ed to ap­pear at the CoE to an­swer ques­tions on the project.

The Sun­day Guardian learned that two JCC mem­bers sided with Gar­cia and at­tempt­ed to force Ray­mond to pub­lish an apol­o­gy to him, cit­ing the need for a "cor­dial" re­la­tion­ship with the Ude­cott board. Ray­mond's re­fusal led to height­ened ten­sions with­in the JCC, which trig­gered his res­ig­na­tion. The mat­ter of whether an apol­o­gy is war­rant­ed is now be­fore the coun­cil's le­gal team, but the Sun­day Guardian was told that with Ray­mond out of the of­fice for a month now, the need for a let­ter of apol­o­gy has waned.

The Sun­day Guardian al­so learned that the JCC vi­o­lat­ed its own con­sti­tu­tion and by­passed Ray­mond on the at­ten­dance list for coun­cil meet­ings. As the im­me­di­ate past pres­i­dent, Ray­mond is au­to­mat­i­cal­ly a coun­cil mem­ber but the Sun­day Guardian has learned that the for­mer pres­i­dent Win­ston Ri­ley has re­fused to give way and ac­knowl­edge Ray­mond as the new im­me­di­ate past pres­i­dent on the JCC ex­ec­u­tive.

Those close to Ray­mond, who spoke with the Sun­day Guardian on Tues­day and Wednes­day, said that out of re­spect for the JCC's role in the con­struc­tion sec­tor, Ray­mond has not com­ment­ed at all on this is­sue, de­spite sev­er­al re­quests.

When con­tact­ed last week, JCC founder Emile Elias said in an email that he "dis­cussed this whole ques­tion with Mr Gar­cia."

He said, "I do be­lieve that he would ap­pre­ci­ate an apol­o­gy from the JCC for the record. How­ev­er, af­ter some dis­cus­sion, he does not seem to have an in­ter­est in tak­ing the mat­ter against the JCC any fur­ther. In my judg­ment, the JCC does not have an ex­po­sure."

Those close to Ray­mond are ques­tion­ing why an apol­o­gy was im­por­tant enough to force him out of of­fice, but was no longer nec­es­sary once he re­signed.

Elias per­son­al­ly se­lect­ed Ray­mond over oth­er long­stand­ing col­leagues to be the fea­ture speak­er at the NH In­ter­na­tion­al 50th an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion din­ner in Sep­tem­ber. Days af­ter Ray­mond re­signed, Elias said he spoke with Gar­cia and de­ter­mined that an apol­o­gy was no longer nec­es­sary.

The role of the JCC

The JCC is made up of mem­bers from all seg­ments of the con­struc­tion in­dus­try and of­ten acts as the watch­dog for that sec­tor. The six mem­ber or­gan­i­sa­tions un­der the JCC ad­vo­cate for more trans­paren­cy in ten­der­ing pro­ce­dures, fair busi­ness prac­tices, ef­fi­cient dis­pute res­o­lu­tion and work to es­tab­lish codes of prac­tice.

There are six heads of coun­cils which make up the JCC which in­clude:

�2 As­so­ci­a­tion of Pro­fes­sion­al En­gi­neers of Trinidad and To­ba­go (APETT),

�2 Trinidad and To­ba­go In­sti­tute of Ar­chi­tects (TTIA),

�2 Trinidad and To­ba­go So­ci­ety of Plan­ners (TTSP),

�2 Trinidad and To­ba­go Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion (TTCA)

�2 In­sti­tute of Sur­vey­ors of Trinidad and To­ba­go (ISTT),

�2 The TT Chap­ter of the In­ter­na­tion­al Fa­cil­i­ty Man­age­ment As­so­ci­a­tion (TTIFMA),

Sev­er­al front­line mem­bers of the JCC are among con­trac­tors and con­sul­tants owed mil­lions of dol­lars by the State. Sev­er­al of those bills would have to be cleared via Ude­cott.

It is the JCC that lever­ages on the Gov­ern­ment for the pay­ment of mil­lions of dol­lars owed to the con­struc­tion in­dus­try. In 2014 alone, the fig­ure owed to con­trac­tors stood at $116 mil­lion. In 2010 when Ray­mond first took of­fice, the con­struc­tion in­dus­try was owed some $1.5 bil­lion. The JCC had even threat­ened to take the Gov­ern­ment to court to en­sure its mem­ber­ship was paid.

The Ri­ley fac­tor

The in­ter­nal JCC strife seems cen­tred among two piv­otal coun­cil mem­bers: Ray­mond and Ri­ley

In Ray­mond's res­ig­na­tion let­ter, ob­tained by the Sun­day Guardian, he sin­gled out for­mer JCC pres­i­dent Ri­ley. He said Ri­ley was ful­ly aware that he planned to ques­tion Gar­cia's ap­point­ment to Ude­cott and queried why Ri­ley was now deny­ing that they spoke on the mat­ter. Ri­ley's ob­jec­tions came on­ly af­ter Gar­cia blast­ed Ray­mond for his let­ter to the ed­i­tor.

"An­oth­er sig­nif­i­cant point we must reg­is­ter is the si­lence of that sub­mis­sion on WR's (Ri­ley's) po­si­tion on how Noel Gar­cia re­spond­ed to the var­i­ous news­pa­per re­ports. There is a glar­ing log­i­cal dis­con­nect be­tween WR's full sup­port for/ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion of Noel Gar­cia's po­si­tion and the im­pu­ta­tion that Gar­cia has some­how been at­tacked. I will re­state it for the record–If what Noel Gar­cia has done is in fact prop­er–which was the em­phat­ic view of WR–how then does JCC writ­ing the ed­i­tor about it come to be seen as an at­tack now re­quir­ing an apol­o­gy?" Ray­mond asked.

The Sun­day Guardian has al­so learned that Ri­ley is now bid­ding to re­turn to the JCC as its pres­i­dent.

Ray­mond: Me­di­a­tion is need­ed

In an email cor­re­spon­dence to JCC heavy­weights–Elias, Ri­ley and Mervyn Thomp­son–Ray­mond stat­ed that Ri­ley had been "abu­sive and dis­rup­tive" to­wards him at two meet­ings im­me­di­ate­ly pri­or to his res­ig­na­tion.

"For those who were ab­sent from the sec­ond of those meet­ings, I stat­ed clear­ly that the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion in the be­hav­iour of the then im­me­di­ate past-Pres­i­dent to­wards me was the great­est con­cern fac­ing our or­gan­i­sa­tion. I al­so went on for­mal record to say that, de­spite the fla­grant abuse, I was pre­pared to take part in a process of me­di­a­tion so that this im­por­tant re­la­tion­ship could be re­stored in the greater in­ter­est," he said in that email.

Gar­cia:

Sev­er­al at­tempts to con­tact Gar­cia proved fu­tile, but the Sun­day Guardian re­ceived a copy of his re­sponse to Ray­mond's con­tentious let­ter to the ed­i­tor. In that let­ter, which was writ­ten on the day the let­ter ap­peared in the news­pa­per, Gar­cia said that Ray­mond, in ref­er­ence to the CoE, "speaks dis­parag­ing­ly of the prospect of the Chair­man of a State En­ter­prise de­clin­ing to tes­ti­fy at a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry."

De­spite me­dia re­ports to the con-trary, Gar­cia said he "nev­er re­fused to give ev­i­dence" be­fore the CoE.

"De­spite what Mr Ray­mond claims to have read (and what he er­ro­neous­ly plain­ly be­lieves), the Com­mis­sion has nev­er at any time con­tact­ed or sub­poe­naed me on the mat­ter of the Las Al­turas Project. This, al­though my postal ad­dress, email ad­dress and tele­phone num­ber have re­mained un­changed for years," Gar­cia said in that let­ter.

Gar­cia said he nev­er shirked his du­ty to give ev­i­dence be­fore any court or any tri­bunal with re­spect to mat­ters with­in his knowl­edge as a for­mer em­ploy­ee of the HDC.

"In his self-ap­point­ed role as guardian of the pub­lic con­science, Mr Ray­mond ought to be more care­ful about per­mit­ting his of­fi­cious zeal to lead him in­to mak­ing what can be con­sid­ered to be defam­a­to­ry im­pu­ta­tions about oth­ers. Mr Ray­mond's self-con­fessed in­abil­i­ty to lo­cate any pub­lished re­spons­es from me to press re­ports he has read is no li­cence for him to do so," Gar­cia said.

More in­fo

?The JCC has of­ten chal­lenged state boards and Gov­ern­men­tal projects. It was the JCC which pub­licly called for more trans­paren­cy in the award of the Beetham Waste­water Treat­ment fa­cil­i­ty and the Eden Gar­dens hous­ing project. The JCC al­so tack­led and pub­li­cised the Ed­u­ca­tion Fa­cil­i­ties Com­pa­ny Ltd move to hide the name of its con­trac­tors and was in­trin­sic in end­ing the first hunger strike by en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh over the Debe to Mon De­sir por­tion of the high­way to Point Fortin back in 2012.

The JCC serves as the watch­dog for the con­struc­tion sec­tor.