Gail Alexan­der

Nuts, bolts and wash­ers were bought to the tune of $6 mil­lion by di­rect pur­chase rather than com­pet­i­tive bid­ding in T&TEC street-light­ing project, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan said on Tues­day. Speak­ing in the Sen­ate, Ram­lo­gan said even that project was "rid­dled with cor­rup­tion." A re­port on the is­sue was re­ceived by the pre­vi­ous At­tor­ney Gen­er­al short­ly be­fore the May elec­tion.

Ram­lo­gan said the re­port's con­tents not­ed that the ten­der­ing process was ig­nored. He al­so said the val­ue of cer­tain T&TEC street-light­ing con­tracts were bro­ken up and award­ed to var­i­ous com­pa­nies, all owned by one per­son. He said six or­ders were gen­er­at­ed in one day for the same firm for sup­ply of ma­te­ri­als.

Al­so, ten­ders were bro­ken up in­to bits and pieces to by­pass scruti­ny in one mat­ter worth $2.7mil­lion, he added. He claimed there were al­so in­stances of push­ing mat­ters ur­gent­ly to by­pass ten­der­ing pro­cees to favour one sup­pli­er. Ram­lo­gan al­so said the CL Fi­nan­cial mat­ter was so bad­ly han­dled by the PNM it was burn­ing a "hole" in Gov­ern­ment cof­fers and the PP was yet to as­cer­tain a per­ma­nent so­cio-eco­nom­ic so­lu­tion.