Richard Lord

Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er says he's not los­ing any sleep be­cause of the con­tro­ver­sy over the award of con­tracts to two firms for the $83 mil­lion up­grade of the Air­field Light­ing Con­trol and Mon­i­tor­ing Sys­tem at the Pi­ar­co and Crowne Point In­ter­na­tion­al Air­ports. He said the con­tracts were award­ed with­in the law. The con­tract for Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port was award­ed to Har­ry Per­sad and Sons Lim­it­ed and Unit­ed En­gi­neer­ing Ser­vices Lim­it­ed for Crowne Point In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has stopped the con­tracts af­ter it was re­port­ed in the news­pa­per that they were award­ed with­out a board be­ing in place at the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty. The con­tracts were be­ing re­viewed, sources say.

But Warn­er, speak­ing dur­ing a news con­fer­ence af­ter a meet­ing with maxi-taxi dri­vers at his of­fice, in­sist­ed that by ap­prov­ing the con­tracts he had done no wrong. "This has to be a strange coun­try, a strange coun­try in­deed," he said in re­sponse to ques­tions on the con­tro­ver­sy at his of­fice yes­ter­day. He said he agreed to sign for the award the con­tracts af­ter "the Air­ports (Au­thor­i­ty) said that they had to have the lights put on be­cause it's a risk." Warn­er said a sim­i­lar po­si­tion was out­lined dur­ing a meet­ing with Chief Sec­re­tary in the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Orville Lon­don on Au­gust 24.

He said: "He (Lon­don) said in To­ba­go a plane could not land. He said so to me...I said okay, let's see what we can do." He said the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty said it had no board but the lights were "crit­i­cal". He added that he was as­sured that every­thing was trans­par­ent with the ten­der­ing process. "And as the line min­is­ter, I had no re­sis­tance what­so­ev­er to tell them to go ahead," Warn­er added.

He said the pre­vi­ous AATT board had gone through all the ten­der­ing process since 2009, but no award was ap­proved. He said giv­ing the re­quired ap­proval sug­gest­ed that not one but two firms be giv­en the con­tracts, one in To­ba­go and the oth­er in Trinidad, to en­sure a speedy com­ple­tion of the projects.

Warn­er said yes­ter­day the en­tire project would be re­tendered. He said: "Let it stay so. I have no prob­lem. I have no prob­lem cause if you know me well, noth­ing stands un­der my feet. "And if that is the sys­tem that the coun­try wants, go ahead...I have no prob­lem with that." He said his ac­tions were based on the need to have the lights in­stalled quick­ly. Warn­er said the con­tro­ver­sy was an at­tempt by ac­tivist and broad­cast­er In­shan Ish­mael to un­der­mine him as min­is­ter and the new Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment. "Sure it is...And I am not go­ing to al­low Mr Ish­mael to phase me," he said.