Gail Alexan­der

The fam­i­ly of PNM lo­cal gov­ern­ment cam­paign man­ag­er John Ra­hael re­ceived project con­tracts from the pre­vi­ous PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion which amassed more than $1 bil­lion in cost over­runs, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan claimed yes­ter­day. In his maid­en ad­dress to the Sen­ate re­gard­ing a mo­tion on the econ­o­my, Ram­lo­gan list­ed a litany of PNM projects with cost over­runs and cit­ed oth­er al­leged ir­reg­u­lar­i­ties and "deals" of that ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The AG par­tic­u­lar­ly lev­elled ac­cu­sa­tions at projects in which he said Ra­hael fam­i­ly com­pa­nies–Trin­i­ty Hous­ing and Broad­way Prop­er­ties–were in­volved. How­ev­er yes­ter­day, Al­win Chow, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of Trin­i­ty and Broad­way, said Ram­lo­gan's claims were: "To­tal­ly and ab­solute­ly false and ir­rev­o­ca­bly wrong." Chow, a for­mer In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor, added: "I know the Ho­n­ourable At­tor­ney Gen­er­al will cor­rect this at the first op­por­tu­ni­ty. It is so wrong–it is com­plete mis­un­der­stand­ing of the facts. There is not even a scin­til­la of cor­rect­ness in this." Chow said a lot of what Ram­lo­gan read out con­cern­ing Broad­way as cost over­runs was ac­tu­al­ly the orig­i­nal con­tract val­ues. Chow said Trin­i­ty was the con­struc­tion arm of the com­pa­nies.

Ram­lo­gan said the PP Gov­ern­ment had in­her­it­ed an econ­o­my bur­dened with many "deals and price tags."

He said: "The econ­o­my is not in as good a shape as it could or should be–that's the re­al­i­ty we face. "The main rea­son for the present state of the econ­o­my–good, bad or ug­ly–is mis­man­age­ment, waste and cor­rup­tion of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion... it is deals, deals and more deals," he claimed. "Every­where you turn there was a deal...every min­istry, every file on gov­ern­ment op­er­a­tions." Ram­lo­gan claimed that Trin­i­ty Hous­ing owned by the Ra­hael group con­struct­ed 138 units at Or­chard Gar­dens, in­cur­ring cost over­runs of $50 mil­lion. He claimed an­oth­er de­vel­op­ment at Corinth Hills was done by the same com­pa­ny, in­cur­ring cost over­runs of $128 mil­lion. Ram­lo­gan al­so not­ed Trin­i­ty Hous­ing projects with cost over­runs in­clud­ing East Grove in Curepe ($64 mil­lion), Bon Air (an orig­i­nal $13 mil­lion con­tract with $19 mil­lion in cost over­runs) and Green­vale Park ($156 mil­lion in cost over­runs.)

He al­so cit­ed Broad­way Prop­er­ties–whose man­ag­ing di­rec­tor is list­ed as Joseph Ra­hael–which was con­tract­ed to build schools.

Ram­lo­gan list­ed de­lays and cost over­runs on sev­er­al of those projects–Cou­va Ju­nior Sec­ondary ($172 mil­lion), Barataria Ju­nior Sec­ondary ($149 mil­lion), Pleas­antville Ju­nior Sec­ondary ($150 mil­lion). He said Os­ha laws vir­tu­al­ly closed down the con­tract for the Pleas­antville project due to safe­ty con­cerns. Ram­lo­gan said the in­for­ma­tion was of­ten "se­cret­ed" and con­cealed and get­ting it from the pub­lic ser­vice was of­ten a chal­lenge. He said, how­ev­er, the sit­u­a­tion re­vealed that one group loy­al to the for­mer rul­ing par­ty–whose lo­cal gov­ern­ment cam­paign is be­ing man­aged by Ra­hael–re­ceived the projects. Out­lin­ing cost over­runs in oth­er ar­eas, Ram­lo­gan said that in ten na­tion­al projects (out of 70) done by Ude­cott, there were al­so more than $4 bil­lion in cost over­runs with the equiv­a­lent of more than 20 years' de­lay.

Over­runs

�2 Ch­agua­nas Cor­po­ra­tion ad­min­is­tra­tive com­plex–over bud­get by $10 mil­lion–24-month de­lay.

�2 Chancery Lane com­plex–$300 mil­lion over bud­get–24-month de­lay.

�2 Gov­ern­ment cam­pus and Le­gal Af­fairs tow­er–$300 mil­lion over bud­get–18-month de­lay.

�2 Wa­ter­front project–$1.3 bil­lion over bud­get–six-month de­lay.

�2 Ed­u­ca­tion Min­istry tow­er–$300 mil­lion over bud­get–20-month de­lay.

�2 Per­form­ing Arts Cen­tre–$234 mil­lion over bud­get–one-year de­lay.

�2 South PRC–$238 mil­lion over bud­get–13 months over­due.

�2 Bev­er­ly Hills Hous­ing–$106 mil­lion cost over­run–65-month de­lay.

�2 Lara Sta­di­um–sev­er­al mil­lion cost over­run–41-months de­lay.

�2 Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre–$700 mil­lion cost over­run–five-month de­lay.