Asha Javeed

Lead Ed­i­tor In­ves­ti­ga­tions

asha.javeed@guardian.co.tt

Less than two years af­ter it was es­tab­lished, the chair­man of the Sec­ondary Road Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and Im­prove­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (SR­RIC) has re­signed, an au­dit is be­ing con­duct­ed by the Min­istry of Fi­nance in­to the com­pa­ny’s process, and a com­plaint for in­ves­ti­ga­tion has been filed at the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (OPR) in­to al­le­ga­tions of col­lu­sion, price-fix­ing, and bid-rig­ging.

The Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that there is al­so ten­sion be­tween the chief ex­ec­u­tive of the com­pa­ny, An­to­nio Ross, and its line min­istry, the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port (MOWT).

As a re­sult, projects have been at a stand­still as no new funds have been re­leased from the Min­istry of Fi­nance as the au­dit is un­der­way.

SR­RIC has al­ready used $70 mil­lion of the $100 mil­lion that was in­ject­ed to cap­i­talise the com­pa­ny when it was set up in 2022.

The Sun­day Guardian was told that when SR­RIC was moved to MOWT, one of the is­sues raised was the fact that new con­tracts were is­sued, al­though the en­ti­ty had been in­struct­ed not to do so.

One of the con­cerns al­so raised was that the rates be­ing paid by SR­RIC were dou­ble the present in­dus­try mar­ket rates.

Her­bert George, the for­mer chair­man of SR­RIC, con­firmed his res­ig­na­tion, even though he re­mains chair­man of two oth­er state en­ter­pris­es un­der the MOWT: the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed (NID­CO) and Na­tion­al Quar­ries (NQ).

When George was ap­point­ed as chair of Na­tion­al Quar­ries, Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Ro­han Sinanan said, “The three state en­ter­pris­es (NID­CO, NQ, and SR­RIC) iden­ti­fied in your ques­tion have com­ple­men­tary roles as they are all geared to­wards the up­grade and main­te­nance of the na­tion’s road net­work. NID­CO ex­e­cutes in­fra­struc­tur­al projects on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment and the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port; the Na­tion­al Quar­ries has the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of pro­vid­ing one of the in­puts for the con­struc­tion of in­fra­struc­ture projects; and the Sec­ondary Road com­pa­ny is an­oth­er en­ti­ty that is rel­e­vant to the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and up­grade of our road sys­tem.”

In re­sponse to ques­tions last week, Sinanan said, “We have ad­vised the com­pa­ny of the nec­es­sary gov­ern­ment com­pli­ance re­quire­ments in ac­cor­dance with the state en­ter­prise per­for­mance man­u­al for state en­ti­ties as well as the Min­istry of Fi­nance re­quire­ments for the re­lease of funds. As in­di­cat­ed, the chair­man did re­sign.”

Sinanan said he was un­able to com­ment on the is­sue of bid rig­ging since the min­istry has no ev­i­dence of such ac­tiv­i­ties.

George told the Sun­day Guardian, “I re­signed from SR­RIC be­cause I need­ed to fo­cus on some oth­er as­sign­ments that were putting a greater de­mand on my time.” How­ev­er, he con­firmed that he was aware of the ten­sion be­tween the com­pa­ny and its line min­istry.

Ac­cord­ing to SR­RIC’s web­site, it award­ed 52 projects for the pe­ri­od Sep­tem­ber 2023 to Jan­u­ary 2024. The web­site said the com­pa­ny used the “se­lec­tive” method to award con­tracts.

The com­pa­nies are Coos­al’s Con­struc­tion Com­pa­ny Ltd—19 con­tracts; Conaft Ltd—16 con­tracts; Ricky Raghu­nanan Ltd—six con­tracts; Dan­ny’s En­ter­pris­es Ltd—five con­tracts; Gen­er­al Earth Movers Ltd—four con­tracts; Renold, Dex­ter, and Collin Cre­ative Con­struc­tion Ltd—one con­tract; Trinidad and To­ba­go In­no­v­a­tive Con­trac­tors Ltd—one con­tract.

Ross re­sponds

When ini­tial­ly con­tact­ed, Ross de­clined to speak on record about the state of the com­pa­ny but said he would en­ter­tain ques­tions.

In re­sponse to ques­tions from the Sun­day Guardian on the state of the com­pa­ny, he out­lined the his­to­ry of SR­RIC: “SR­RIC was es­tab­lished in 2022 to add ca­pac­i­ty to the need to bring re­lief to users of the sec­ondary road vest­ed un­der the mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions, which com­pris­es a large per­cent­age of the road net­work.

“The com­pa­ny was moved to the MOWT in 2023 to (in my opin­ion) al­low align­ment with the PURE pro­gramme to achieve bet­ter economies of scale in pur­chas­ing con­tract­ing and ex­e­cu­tion, es­pe­cial­ly as there was a sig­nif­i­cant short­age in ma­te­ri­als such as ag­gre­gate and as­phalt.

“This was met with the trans­fer of Lake As­phalt from the MEEI to MOWT as well as the re­align­ment of Na­tion­al Quar­ries. Since re­align­ment, the com­pa­ny has ef­fect­ed the vast ma­jor­i­ty of its work un­der the MOWT and so con­tin­ues.”

Ross said SR­RIC was not at present un­der any spe­cif­ic au­dit oth­er than its con­stant in­ter­nal au­dits by way of the in­ter­nal au­dit de­part­ment, which is a stan­dard fea­ture and ex­pec­ta­tion as a state en­ter­prise.

“This en­sures a ful­ly trans­par­ent sys­tem in com­pli­ance with the pub­lic pro­cure­ment law and all oth­er ap­plic­a­ble laws of Trinidad and To­ba­go. This in­ter­nal au­dit was un­der­tak­en to ex­am­ine and re­view every sin­gle con­tract along­side process­es to doc­u­ment all trans­ac­tions and meth­ods, there­by demon­strat­ing com­plete com­pli­ance with the law, es­pe­cial­ly as the com­pa­ny need­ed sys­tems to en­sure tight man­age­ment of any chal­lenge pro­ceed­ings that could slow down ac­tiv­i­ties and to man­age the nov­el­ty of the pub­lic pro­cure­ment and dis­pos­al of pub­lic prop­er­ty act.”

Asked specif­i­cal­ly about the ten­sion be­tween him and MOWT, he an­swered, “I’m not quite sure what you are re­fer­ring to in this ques­tion and will need elab­o­ra­tion.”

About the Sec­ondary Road com­pa­ny

In March 2023, af­ter less than a year, SR­RIC was moved from the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment to MOWT.

It meant that in the space of a year, four state en­ter­pris­es were trans­ferred to the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port—Lake As­phalt of Trinidad and To­ba­go (1978) Lim­it­ed; Na­tion­al Ma­rine Main­te­nance Ser­vices Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed; Sec­ondary Road Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and Im­prove­ment Com­pa­ny; and Na­tion­al Quar­ries Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed. With the ex­cep­tion of the Sec­ondary Roads com­pa­ny, the boards ap­point­ed by the present ad­min­is­tra­tion were all changed.

In Au­gust 2022, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley an­nounced the es­tab­lish­ment of a new state en­ti­ty, the SR­RIC.

In his 2023–2024 Bud­get con­tri­bu­tion, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert ex­plained, “Our road in­fra­struc­ture, which had de­te­ri­o­rat­ed dur­ing the pan­dem­ic when re­sources were redi­rect­ed to the health sec­tor, would now un­der­go a ma­jor re­pair and re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion ex­er­cise.”

The SR­RIC was cap­i­talised with an ini­tial $100 mil­lion, and George was ap­point­ed as the ex­ec­u­tive chair­man.

 “A fur­ther $100 mil­lion has been al­lo­cat­ed for this com­pa­ny in 2023, mak­ing a to­tal of $200 mil­lion im­me­di­ate­ly avail­able for the re­pair of sec­ondary roads. We ex­pect the com­pa­ny to use these funds proac­tive­ly to car­ry out much-need­ed sec­ondary road re­pairs through­out the coun­try. Ad­di­tion­al al­lo­ca­tions have al­so been pro­vid­ed for the 14 mu­nic­i­pal cor­po­ra­tions,” Im­bert had said.

How­ev­er, the Sun­day Guardian un­der­stands that since the ini­tial $100 mil­lion, no new funds have been dis­bursed to SR­RIC.

 In 2022, Sinanan had said that de­spite the es­tab­lish­ment of the SR­RIC, the MOWT would still main­tain the Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing Roads Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE) pro­gramme.

He had said the man­dates of the two en­ti­ties are dif­fer­ent.

“There is no ex­pect­ed dis­con­tin­u­ance of the PURE Unit. The man­dates of the two en­ti­ties are not the same. In keep­ing with the man­date of the MOWT, the PURE Unit main­ly ad­dress­es high­ways and main roads, while the Sec­ondary Roads com­pa­ny will fo­cus on lo­cal gov­ern­ment roads. The Min­istry will work with the new com­pa­ny to pro­vide tech­ni­cal as­sis­tance where re­quired,” he said.

 PURE be­gan as a short- to medi­um-term so­lu­tion to ad­dress dis­tressed roads. Ac­cord­ing to the MOWT’s web­site, it “has since evolved in­to an en­ti­ty re­spon­si­ble for project man­age­ment ini­tia­tives that pro­mote healthy roads across the coun­try.”

 Ac­cord­ing to its web­site, the man­date of SR­RIC is to de­vel­op the ex­ist­ing in­fra­struc­ture of sec­ondary roads by fo­cus­ing on road re­pair, re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion, and up­grade works through­out Trinidad to en­hance road ca­pac­i­ty, im­prove ex­ist­ing road in­fra­struc­ture, and en­sure con­sis­tent road ac­ces­si­bil­i­ty and con­nec­tiv­i­ty through­out the coun­try.

“SR­RIC has achieved ex­cel­lence by en­gag­ing a cross-dis­ci­pli­nary and mul­ti­func­tion­al team to de­liv­er a qual­i­ty prod­uct that op­ti­mis­es costs, which ex­tends to our clients and stake­hold­ers. We at SR­RIC up­hold our projects and ser­vices to a high stan­dard and seek to de­liv­er our man­date in align­ment with our mis­sion and vi­sion,” it said.