Richard Lord

British of­fi­cials met with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Brigadier John Sandy to dis­cuss Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion to can­cel the con­tract to a British firm to con­struct three off­shore pa­trol ves­sels (OPVs) for T&T.

CNC3 re­port­ed last night the meet­ing with the un­named British of­fi­cials took place at the Ca­bil­do of­fice of the AG.

The British Gov­ern­ment was re­port­ed­ly seek­ing the Gov­ern­ment's re­con­sid­er­a­tion of its de­ci­sion to can­cel the con­tract.

Mean­while, Leader of the Op­po­si­tion Dr Kei­th Row­ley said yes­ter­day the T&T Gov­ern­ment may be tak­en to court over its can­cel­la­tion of the bil­lion-dol­lar con­tract to buy three off­shore pa­trol ves­sels from a British firm.

Row­ley said Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's pub­lic state­ments on the Gov­ern­ment's can­cel­la­tion of the con­tract might re­sult in T&T be­ing tak­en to court for breach of con­tract.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said last month the T&T Gov­ern­ment was ex­pect­ed to re­ceive a re­fund of $1.5 bil­lion af­ter British ship­builders, BAE Sys­tems Sur­face-Ships, failed to de­liv­er the three ves­sels on time.

She added that T&T was not pre­pared to waive the breach­es and the (re­fund­ed) mon­ey could be bet­ter spent on health care, ed­u­ca­tion and in­creased salaries for po­lice­men, pris­ons of­fi­cers and oth­ers.

Row­ley told a news con­fer­ence at his Charles Street of­fice, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day the mat­ter could end up in court.

"She has now hand­ed the con­trac­tor a wa­ter­tight de­fence for any lit­i­ga­tion the con­trac­tor may want to bring against the State for the can­cel­la­tion of the con­tract," Row­ley said.He in­sist­ed that any lawyer could ini­ti­ate le­gal ac­tion against the state in the ex­ist­ing cir­cum­stances.

He said he would be very sur­prised "if this mat­ter does not end in se­ri­ous lit­i­ga­tion ... and our (T&T's) case has been com­pro­mised by the Prime Min­is­ter in her loose state­ments." Row­ley al­so called on the PM to speak out on her ap­point­ment of for­mer pub­lic util­i­ties min­is­ter Gan­ga Singh to the post of chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of WASA, and oth­ers, in the wake of foren­sic ev­i­dence with re­spect to the con­tro­ver­sial es­tab­lish­ment of the de­sali­na­tion plant in T&T un­der the for­mer Bas­deo Pan­day Gov­ern­ment.