A March 8, 2021 sum­ma­ry of pay­ments by the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) has con­firmed that the com­pa­ny owned by the wife of Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion (PSA) Pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke—has been paid a to­tal of $16,389,436.01 be­tween 2012 and 2020.

A copy of the re­port­ed pay­ments ob­tained by Guardian Me­dia showed that Black­stone En­gi­neer­ing Tech­nolo­gies Ltd (BETL) which is owned by Kim­ber­ly De Sil­va-Duke, would have been paid by both the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship (PP) and Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ments.

In­for­ma­tion con­tained in the three-page doc­u­ment shows the to­tal val­ue of con­tracts award­ed to BETL was list­ed at $16,984,326.18 – which means that De Sil­va-Duke is still owed $594,890.17 by WASA for com­plet­ed works.

Of the $16.3 mil­lion paid thus far, BETL would have col­lect­ed $11.4 mil­lion un­der the PP regime, while the PNM would have paid out $4.9 mil­lion.

A break­down showed BETL col­lect­ed the largest pay­ment of $6,524,188.86 from the PP be­tween Oc­to­ber 2012 to May 2014.

And be­tween June 2014 to De­cem­ber 2014, BETL re­ceived $3,279,391.92. Dur­ing the pe­ri­od Jan­u­ary 2015 to Sep­tem­ber 2015, BETL was paid $1,667,593.11.

Un­der the PNM gov­ern­ment, BETL col­lect­ed pay­ments to­talling $4,918,272.12.

Three months af­ter the PNM as­sumed of­fice un­der Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, BETL was paid $281,393.50 be­tween Oc­to­ber 2015 to De­cem­ber 2015.

And from Jan­u­ary 2016 to De­cem­ber 2020, the firm net­ted $4,636,878.62 in pay­ments.

BETL has re­ceived no pay­outs for this year so far.

The doc­u­ment quot­ed from a re­view of the Or­a­cle Fi­nan­cial Sys­tem for the pe­ri­od June 2014 to Feb­ru­ary 2021, which out­lined con­tracts award­ed to BETL un­der the fol­low­ing three WASA Ten­der Com­mit­tees (WTCs).

WTCs 05/2010 and 101/2013 for the pro­vi­sions of mains re­pairs, in­stal­la­tion of stop corks, curb valves and me­tres on an as and when re­quired ba­sis for a two year pe­ri­od;

WTC 30/2014 for pro­vi­sion for ground main­te­nance ser­vices at var­i­ous fa­cil­i­ties through­out Trinidad for a three year pe­ri­od.

The doc­u­ment stat­ed, “The con­tract for the pro­vi­sion of main re­pairs, in­stal­la­tion of stop corks, curb valves and me­ters was award­ed to a pool of bond­ed con­trac­tors, util­is­ing fixed rates for the pro­vi­sion of var­i­ous ser­vices on an as and when re­quired ba­sis.”

It fur­ther stat­ed that the last works award­ed to BETL were for the pro­vi­sion of ground main­te­nance for a six month pe­ri­od from May 2017 to Oc­to­ber 2017.

The to­tal VAT-in­clu­sive val­ue of pay­ments made to BETL over the pe­ri­od June 2014 to Feb­ru­ary 2021, was $9,865,247.15. It is as fol­lows:

“Main re­pairs and in­stal­la­tion of stop corks etc- to­tal pur­chase or­der val­ue gen­er­at­ed was $8,173,172.77 of which $7,736,449.73 has been paid to date and ground main­te­nance- to­tal pur­chase or­der val­ue gen­er­at­ed was $2,274,860.29 of which $2,128,797.42 has been paid to date,” the doc­u­ment stat­ed.

In ad­di­tion to the $9,865,247.15 stat­ed above, the doc­u­ment re­vealed “a to­tal of $6,524,188.86 was paid dur­ing the pe­ri­od Oc­to­ber 20212 to May 2014, mak­ing the to­tal pay­ment of $16,389,436.01. When this fig­ure is added to the out­stand­ing pay­ments of $594,890.17, this ac­counts for the to­tal val­ue of the con­tracts award­ed to $16.9 mil­lion.”

The In­ter­nal Au­dit and Com­pli­ance Di­vi­sion (IACD) re­viewed BETL’s sup­pli­er state­ment dat­ed No­vem­ber 29, 2019, which in­di­cat­ed an out­stand­ing sum of $2,046,330.01 was owed by the Au­thor­i­ty.

In re­sponse, WASA of­fi­cials wrote in the re­port, “Hav­ing con­sid­ered Fi­nance Di­vi­sion’s sup­pli­er rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and sub­se­quent pay­ments, a bal­ance of $594,890.17 is iden­ti­fied as the po­ten­tial sum owed to the com­pa­ny by the Au­thor­i­ty.”

“Of this out­stand­ing amount, $284,104,01 has been con­firmed to be un­record­ed li­a­bil­i­ties by Fi­nance and the bal­ance, $ 310,786.16 is still to be ver­i­fied be­fore pay­ment. Of these, one in­voice for $55,355.94 re­lates to pipeline main­te­nance works and the bal­ance of $539,534.23 re­lates to re­ten­tion amounts.”

A sum­ma­ry of un­paid in­voic­es claimed by BETL showed 30 in­voic­es were sub­mit­ted.

The doc­u­ment showed 11 of the in­voic­es were for the pro­vi­sion of mains re­pairs, etc and ground main­te­nance; while 19 were list­ed as “un­clas­si­fied.”

The to­tal val­ue of the 30 in­voic­es (VAT in­clu­sive) was put at $594,890.17.

The val­ue of the 19 un­clas­si­fied in­voic­es in­clu­sive of VAT was put at $105,310.96

The doc­u­ment high­light­ed mat­ters of con­cern re­gard­ing the re­view of board and ten­ders com­mit­tee di­vi­sion for (WTC) 05/2010 on an as and when re­quired ba­sis for an 18 month pe­ri­od which claimed:

* BETL was not part of the orig­i­nal list­ing of 27 con­trac­tors ap­proved to be award­ed con­tracts at the 675th meet­ing of the Board held on March 18, 2011; and

*The com­pa­ny was ap­proved for in­clu­sion at the 219th TC meet­ing held on May 17, 2012, more than a year af­ter the orig­i­nal ap­proval.

“An­oth­er of IACD’s re­port, spe­cial re­quest- val­i­da­tion of bond­ed con­trac­tors un­der WTC’s num­bers 101/2013 and 07/2014 dat­ed De­cem­ber 7, 2017, iden­ti­fied Black­stone was award­ed a con­tract un­der WTC num­ber 101/2013-pro­vi­sion of mains re­pairs, in­stal­la­tion of stop corks, curb valves and me­ters on an as and when re­quired ba­sis for a two year pe­ri­od from Au­gust 2014 to Ju­ly 2016.”

The re­view was per­formed fol­low­ing a re­quest made by the Ten­ders Com­mit­tee (TC) at its 267th meet­ing held on April 6, 2017.

“The new­ly ap­point­ed TC re­quired as­sur­ance as to whether the bond­ed con­trac­tors be­ing re­quest­ed for ex­ten­sion of con­tracts were se­lect­ed through the ap­proved ten­der­ing process.”

How­ev­er, the fol­low­ing were re­port­ed and ob­served.

“The re­port in­di­cat­ed that it ap­peared there was will­ful cir­cum­ven­tion of the Au­thor­i­ty’s pro­cure­ment process and ex­ploita­tion of Ten­der Rule 18 (e) by pre­vi­ous man­age­ment for the in­clu­sion of 54 con­trac­tors (in­clud­ing BETL) who did not sat­is­fy the Au­thor­i­ty’s eval­u­a­tion yet have been award­ed con­tracts,” un­der WTC 101/2013.

A re­view of the work­ing pa­pers re­vealed that ten re­quests were made to the TC or the board over an eight-month pe­ri­od be­tween Oc­to­ber 2014 to May 2015.

“With re­spect to Black­stone, ap­proval was ob­tained from the board at its 718th meet­ing held on Oc­to­ber 31, 2014, for the in­clu­sion of Black­stone, who was not eval­u­at­ed as part of the ten­der­ing process along with three oth­er con­trac­tors as part of WTC 101/2013.”

It stat­ed that the orig­i­nal re­quest was made to the 246th Ten­der Com­mit­tee held on Oc­to­ber 24, 2014, by two high rank­ing of­fi­cials of WASA (names called) “to retroac­tive­ly in­clude the con­trac­tors from the in­cep­tion of the WTC, Au­gust 1, 2014, to the ex­pi­ra­tion of same-Ju­ly 2016, in ac­cor­dance with the Ten­der Rule 18(e).”

“It was al­so not­ed that gen­er­al coun­sel and cor­po­rate sec­re­tary did raise con­cerns with the sole se­lect of the con­trac­tors for the in­clu­sion un­der the WTC in an email dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 11, 2014” to one of the then high rank­ing of­fi­cials.

The doc­u­ment ad­mit­ted that WASA was no longer is­su­ing con­tracts for the pro­vi­sion of ground main­te­nance or main re­pairs, in­stal­la­tion of stop corks, curb valves and me­ters, as these are now per­formed in­ter­nal­ly and form part of man­age­ment’s cost-cut­ting ini­tia­tives.

Duke: Gon­za­les ob­sessed with me and my wife

In­di­cat­ing BETL had noth­ing to do with the award of con­tracts or pro­cure­ment, PSA pres­i­dent Wat­son Duke yes­ter­day said his wife’s com­pa­ny had earned every pen­ny it had so far been paid, as it had per­formed le­git­i­mate works in the past for WASA.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view, Duke re­it­er­at­ed that he was no longer em­ployed by the WASA and that he on­ly vis­it­ed the State en­ti­ty ap­prox­i­mate­ly three times per year to con­duct em­ploy­ee ne­go­ti­a­tions.

Com­ment­ing on the in­for­ma­tion con­tained in the above-men­tioned doc­u­ment, Duke said, “WASA has mon­ey for us and WASA should pay us for the work done.”

He said BETL had noth­ing to feel ashamed about.

“If you worked and the work was sat­is­fac­to­ry, then you should be paid…any­body.”

He said there were Cab­i­net min­is­ters whose wives and rel­a­tives were in sim­i­lar po­si­tions as his wife and re­ceiv­ing bil­lion-dol­lar con­tracts for work from the State, Duke added, “T&T is a small coun­try. The prob­lem is not peo­ple work­ing, the prob­lem is whether peo­ple can le­git­i­mate­ly do the work.”

“We are not the on­ly con­trac­tor, we are a small con­trac­tor so I am still lost as to the point. Is it that a woman should not be suc­cess­ful? Is it that she should not do dili­gent work and be paid for it? Or should she not work at all and de­pend on her hus­band to mind her?”

Ques­tion­ing what is the ob­ses­sion with his wife, Duke ac­cused Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les of wag­ing a per­son­al vendet­ta against him and De Sil­va-Duke in a bid to break them up.

He said his fam­i­ly was be­ing un­fair­ly tar­get­ed in the cher­ry-pick­ing cam­paign, which is now “ex­pos­ing my wife to a rob­bery.”

Duke al­leged, “I think they are try­ing to set my wife up and I am now be­gin­ning to take um­brage with that. I have been seek­ing le­gal re­dress but now, I feel I will have to has­ten that against that min­is­ter….that lit­tle boy called Speedy Gon­za­les.”

He con­clud­ed, “What­ev­er his ob­ses­sion is with me, he has to un­der­stand that I do not like him. I am not in­to him. What God has put to­geth­er, let no man put asun­der.”

Min­is­ter: Unions and WASA man­age­ment col­lud­ing

Con­tact­ed for com­ment yes­ter­day, Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les said the in­for­ma­tion which has found its way in­to the pub­lic do­main “con­tin­ues to vin­di­cate the find­ings of the De­cem­ber 11, 2020 re­port of the Cab­i­net sub-com­mit­tee on WASA that the unions and their re­la­tions have be­come providers of goods and ser­vices to the au­thor­i­ty.”

This sit­u­a­tion, Gon­za­les said, has led to “a break­down of gov­er­nance and con­tributed to over­all mis­man­age­ment of the Au­thor­i­ty. It is prob­a­bly the rea­son why some union lead­ers’ so­lu­tions for fix­ing WASA is pump­ing more tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey in­to WASA. The cit­i­zens of this coun­try need wa­ter in their taps and this will be done in a frame­work of good gov­er­nance and cul­ture of ac­count­abil­i­ty with­in WASA.”