SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior in­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Tax­pay­ers have been pay­ing close to $6 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly in salaries, se­cu­ri­ty fees and util­i­ty bills on four non-op­er­a­tional com­mu­ni­ty swim­ming pools man­aged by the Min­istry of Sport and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment (MSCD).

The month­ly op­er­a­tion cost for these non-func­tion­ing pools is al­most half a mil­lion dol­lars.

Last month, the MSCD pro­vid­ed writ­ten re­spons­es to a list of ques­tions com­ing out of the Fif­teenth Re­port of the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee on the main­te­nance of nine com­mu­ni­ty swim­ming pools in Feb­ru­ary 2023.

Giv­ing the lat­est up­date on the sta­tus of its nine swim­ming pools, the MSCD iden­ti­fied La Hor­quet­ta, Siparia, San­gre Grande and Cou­va as “closed” due to on­go­ing re­fur­bish­ment works while Mor­vant, Diego Mar­tin, Laven­tille, Mal­oney and Co­coyea re­main open to the pub­lic.

The com­mit­tee, chaired by Bridgid An­nisette-George, re­quest­ed writ­ten sub­mis­sions from the MSCD by Jan­u­ary 29, 2024, on sev­er­al is­sues rang­ing from ar­rears owed to agen­cies, a re­view of its re­cruit­ment process, the or­der­ing, pay­ment and de­liv­ery for chem­i­cals for pools, a re­view of its emer­gency re­sponse plan, a list of in­com­plete works and to pro­vide a sta­tus up­date on whether pools were re­opened on sched­ule.

Those re­spons­es were pro­vid­ed on Jan­u­ary 25, 2024, in a 300-page re­port signed by the min­istry’s act­ing per­ma­nent sec­re­tary.

The min­istry’s newest and tenth pool at D’Abadie/Mal­abar is still the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T.

When the MSCD ap­peared be­fore the com­mit­tee last year, they promised to re­open the Siparia, San­gre Grande, Diego Mar­tin and La Hor­quet­ta fa­cil­i­ties by March 2023. Al­most a year lat­er the promise re­mains un­ful­filled for three of those fa­cil­i­ties. On­ly Diego Mar­tin was re­opened last April.

The costs of closed pools

The MSCD was asked by the com­mit­tee to pro­vide the month­ly main­te­nance cost of the nine pools un­der its purview.

A cal­cu­la­tion of the pools’ month­ly op­er­a­tion cost was put at $929,242.50. Its year­ly fig­ure to­talled $11,150, 910.

This was for se­cu­ri­ty fees, util­i­ty bills such as Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Ser­vices of T&T (TSTT), the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) and the T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) and salaries paid to staff mem­bers for each pool.

A break­down showed that while Mal­oney, Mor­vant and Laven­tille pools are pro­vid­ed staffing paid for by “the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty” the MSCD forks out $50,000  a month in salaries for the re­main­ing six pools.

The month­ly salaries for the work­ers at the six pools were tab­u­lat­ed at $300,000 with the an­nu­al fig­ure amount­ing to $3,600,000.

The re­port re­vealed that the MSCD’s month­ly se­cu­ri­ty fee for its nine pools was $403,642.50, while it cost tax­pay­ers $4,843,710 an­nu­al­ly.

There was a vari­a­tion in the month­ly se­cu­ri­ty fees for the nine pools which ranged be­tween $43,200 to $48,000. The Diego Mar­tin and Laven­tille pools rack up the high­est se­cu­ri­ty bill of $48,000 each month­ly. The low­est were Co­coyea, San­gre Grande and Siparia at $43,200 each.

Each pool var­ied in its month­ly WASA bill which ranged from $300 to $1,500.

The min­istry’s over­all month­ly wa­ter bill was put at $6,300. Its an­nu­al WASA bill was es­ti­mat­ed at $75,600.

A pe­rusal of the pools’ month­ly T&TEC bills was be­tween $5,000 to $10,000.

The month­ly and year­ly costs were put at $58,000 and $696,000 re­spec­tive­ly.

Phone ser­vices pro­vid­ed by TSTT were be­tween $200 to $1,000 a month. Each month the MSCD pays a col­lec­tive tele­phone bill of $3,800. The year­ly pay­ment to TSTT to­talled $45,600.

An­oth­er bill the MS­DC pays month­ly is for “clean­ing sup­ply” and “chem­i­cals” for each pool which was put at $7,000. The month­ly tab for these sup­plies was $84,000 while the year­ly fig­ure was cal­cu­lat­ed at $756,000.

A tab­u­la­tion of the month­ly and year­ly op­er­a­tional costs of the four non-func­tion­ing pools was put at $491,765.50 and $5,901,186 re­spec­tive­ly.

A break­down showed the MSCD’s month­ly over­all ex­pens­es for La Hor­quet­ta were $123,912.50, San­gre Grande $122,600, Siparia $121,900, and Cou­va $123,350.

It was re­vealed that the MSCD sub­mit­ted a note for Cab­i­net for se­cu­ri­ty, main­te­nance, land­scap­ing and jan­i­to­r­i­al ser­vices for the pools.

The MSCD stat­ed in its re­port that Cab­i­net Minute 443 of March 16, 2023, agreed to the en­gage­ment of the Na­tion­al Main­te­nance Train­ing and Se­cu­ri­ty Com­pa­ny Ltd (MTS) to pro­vide these ser­vices at the pools.  

The com­mit­tee re­quest­ed from the MSCD the es­ti­mat­ed cost to re­pair the 50-year-old Cou­va pool which has struc­tur­al de­fects. It list­ed the fig­ure at $941,792.62.

The MSCD dis­closed that CEP Ltd was award­ed a con­tract last year via “open ten­der” for $48,346.888 to con­duct an as­sess­ment of the Cou­va fa­cil­i­ty which was sub­mit­ted to Par­lia­ment.

MSCD: Re­leas­es on a time­li­er ba­sis from Fi­nance Min­istry

Through­out the com­mit­tee’s on­go­ing hear­ings in 2023, the MSCD said the un­time­ly re­lease of fund­ing by the Fi­nance Min­istry had been de­lay­ing re­fur­bish­ment works on its pools and pro­cure­ment of chem­i­cals and equip­ment.

It was rec­om­mend­ed by the com­mit­tee that the MSCD and the Fi­nance Min­istry meet to dis­cuss this is­sue at their ear­li­est con­ve­nience.

Fol­low­ing a meet­ing with both min­istries last month, the MSCD stat­ed in its re­sponse that re­leas­es are be­ing re­ceived on a time­li­er ba­sis “in ac­cor­dance with the process time­lines and sub­ject to the avail­abil­i­ty of cash flow in the coun­try.”

Ar­rears owed to agen­cies

The com­mit­tee al­so re­quest­ed an up­date from the MSCD on ar­rears owed to agen­cies.

Up to March 31, 2023, the MSCD had an “aged payable” of $24,276,553.31 to T&TEC, WASA, TSTT and the MTS.

T&TEC and MTS were said to be owed the largest sum with $11,765,810.09 and $9,737,812.94 re­spec­tive­ly.

Pro­vid­ing an up­dat­ed fig­ure, the MSCD stat­ed its cur­rent aged payable fig­ures rep­re­sent­ed an “un­rec­on­ciled amount” of $16,807,629.17 to T&TEC, WASA, TSTT and MST.

T&TEC’s fig­ure was put at $12,009,201.51. Trail­ing was MTS with $3,720.871.19, TSTT at $644,404.47, and WASA with the least of $433,152.

The MSCD stat­ed in its re­sponse that “rec­on­cil­i­a­tion re­mains on­go­ing at the time of this re­port.”

The min­istry was asked by the com­mit­tee how long the last re­ceipt of funds to pay for the ex­pen­di­ture re­lat­ed to com­mu­ni­ty pools has been an is­sue.

Re­spond­ing, the MSCD stat­ed the late re­ceipt of funds to pay for the ex­pen­di­ture re­lat­ed to the pools has been an is­sue be­tween 2015 and 2022.

How­ev­er, as of fis­cal year 2022/2023, the MSCD not­ed that the re­ceipt of funds has been reg­u­lar once the re­quest for pur­chas­es has been sub­mit­ted prompt­ly.

The com­mit­tee al­so asked the MSCD to state if they had fi­nalised the re­vi­sion of the fee struc­ture for pools that do not charge their users.

The users of the Laven­tille, Mor­vant, Mal­oney, D’Abadie/Mal­abar and Co­coyea pools are not charged to use these fa­cil­i­ties.

This had not been the case with users of the Siparia, Diego Mar­tin, Cou­va, San­gre Grande and La Hor­quet­ta pools who had to pay $40 per hour per per­son.

Schools were charged a fee of $100 per term. These fees are heav­i­ly sub­sidised.

“Meet­ings have been on­go­ing be­tween the MSCD and SporTT to dis­cuss the new rates struc­tures which re­sult­ed in the sub­mis­sion of var­i­ous pro­pos­als for con­sid­er­a­tion,” the MSCD stat­ed in its re­port.

 It was de­ter­mined by the min­istry and SporTT that a more com­pre­hen­sive re­view was re­quired and that ex­ter­nal as­sis­tance was need­ed. “To this end, terms of ref­er­ence were de­vel­oped for the en­gage­ment of a con­sul­tant to un­der­take this com­pre­hen­sive re­view for the min­istry and SporTT. The pro­cure­ment process has been ini­ti­at­ed, with SporTT cur­rent­ly re­vis­ing the re­quest for quo­ta­tion pro­pos­al,” the min­istry re­vealed.

The MSCD stat­ed that some pools did not have a fee struc­ture in place “as di­rect­ed by the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter. This was not a de­ci­sion of the min­istry.”

Once the re­view of fees is com­plet­ed, the min­istry stat­ed a note will be sent to Cab­i­net.