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Friday, March 14, 2025

Govt launches probe into AATT kiosk contract

by

Gail Alexander
2135 days ago
20190509
Flashback July 2018 Minister of National Security Edmund Dillon checks a passport at one of the new automated border control system kiosks at Piarco International Airport, as Minister of Works and Transport Rohan Sinanan during the launch.

Flashback July 2018 Minister of National Security Edmund Dillon checks a passport at one of the new automated border control system kiosks at Piarco International Airport, as Minister of Works and Transport Rohan Sinanan during the launch.

SHIRLEY BAHADUR

US $510,000 a month for sev­en years.

That cost and time frame for a con­tract en­tered in­to by the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty of T&T board and No­vo Tech­nol­o­gy In­cor­po­ra­tion Ltd—for sup­ply of au­to­mat­ed im­mi­gra­tion kiosks—has raised “red flags” for Gov­ern­ment, which has or­dered a probe of the con­tract.

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young yes­ter­day an­nounced for­mer Jus­tice Rol­ston Nel­son will probe the mat­ter and re­port in two months.

Young said part of the con­tract which al­so both­ers Gov­ern­ment con­cerns con­tract ter­mi­na­tion. This will re­quire the State to pay the com­pa­ny the month­ly cost for all sev­en years of the deal—a to­tal of al­most US $43 mil­lion.

At yes­ter­day’s post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing, Young con­firmed a PNM-ap­point­ed AATT board—but not the cur­rent board—was in­volved.

“The con­tract has very oner­ous terms. We saw mas­sive red flags and need to ask ‘why did you en­ter this con­tract and on whose au­thor­i­ty did you en­ter it’,” he said.

“I’m not say­ing any­thing was done wrong by the board, but red flags have been raised and from de­ci­sions, we’ve seen it looks as though there may be cir­cum­stances in the en­ter­ing in­to of the con­tract we’re not com­fort­able with—cer­tain­ly the terms we’re not com­fort­able with.”

He said the State hasn’t paid the full US $510,000 month­ly fee for the au­to­mat­ed pass­port kiosks, “so they (com­pa­ny) are claim­ing we owe them.”

Young said Cab­i­net was un­aware of the con­tract which was signed in 2017 and a sup­ple­men­tal con­tract signed in March 2018. He said it ap­peared the ini­tial in­volve­ment on the is­sue might have been through the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry, but it ap­peared there was no in­volve­ment of the Works Min­is­ter, un­der whose purview AATT falls. Young, who be­came Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter in Au­gust 2018, said he was un­aware of the sit­u­a­tion and had re­cent­ly asked im­mi­gra­tion about the kiosks.

Hous­ing Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon, who was Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter from Sep­tem­ber 2015 to Au­gust 2018, did not re­ply to calls yes­ter­day.

Young ex­plained the “red flags” went up when it be­came ap­par­ent the con­tract was ex­e­cut­ed be­tween AATT and the com­pa­ny for in­stal­la­tion of the kiosks for Pi­ar­co and To­ba­go’s air­ports. The con­tract was first en­tered in­to on De­cem­ber 15, 2017 and a sup­ple­men­tal con­tract in March 2018.

Kiosks were launched in 2018 and used on a vol­un­tary ba­sis.

He said the AATT ap­proached the Works Min­istry for fi­nanc­ing for pay­ment for the con­tract and Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan then raised is­sues with the Fi­nance Min­istry, ask­ing for Fi­nance’s Cen­tral Au­dit unit to ex­am­ine the pro­cure­ment and ten­der­ing process­es.

Cab­i­net ap­point­ed Young, Sinanan and Fi­nance’s Colm Im­bert to re-ex­am­ine doc­u­men­ta­tion sur­round­ing the is­sue.

Young said cir­cum­stances sur­round­ing the first con­tract and the “strange” sup­ple­men­tal one in 2018 mer­it­ed ur­gent in­ves­ti­ga­tion.

Young said: “We have se­ri­ous con­cerns with ex­pen­di­ture of this sum. The US $510,000 month­ly fee would al­so be just over TT $3 mil­lion month­ly—TT $40 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly.

“But AATT wouldn’t have got­ten pro­gram­ming rights to the kiosks af­ter pay­ing for sev­en years. Most as­tound­ing, ATTT didn’t have arrange­ments to cov­er fi­nan­cial pay­ments. Our team ad­vised Cab­i­net it was un­ac­cept­able.”

He said an air­port tax was pro­posed to cov­er the kiosk cost but by the time the con­tract was en­tered in­to there was no law in place to make kiosks manda­to­ry.

Young said rec­om­men­da­tions on the is­sue made to Cab­i­net were ap­proved yes­ter­day. The Works Min­istry will now seek in­de­pen­dent le­gal ad­vice on the con­tract, le­gal oblig­a­tions by AATT and the state and how the process start­ed.

Works’ le­gal team re­cent­ly met an in­de­pen­dent coun­sel re­tained on the mat­ter. He didn’t give cost of the coun­sel but added le­gal fees would nev­er be the $1.4 bil­lion paid dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship’s tenure.

Young said Cab­i­net had in­for­ma­tion on who signed the con­tracts but wasn’t go­ing to be pros­e­cu­tor, judge and ju­ry, hence Nel­son’s ap­point­ment to ask ques­tions of those in­volved. Why con­tracts were en­tered and on whose au­thor­i­ty would be up to AATT.

AATT’s 2015 board was head­ed by Nigel Fer­gu­son. A new board ap­point­ed in 2018 was head­ed by Kei­th Thomas. Yes­ter­day, an em­ploy­ee at the com­pa­ny said the gen­er­al man­ag­er wasn’t there.

They re­fused com­ment on the is­sue.

Con­tract con­cerns

Con­tract award didn’t ap­pear to have fol­lowed usu­al ten­ders’ process­es.

It seemed to have been pro­cured via se­lec­tive ten­der­ing.

Biggest con­cerns are the pay­ments: Re­gard­less of the num­ber of pas­sen­gers pass­ing through Pi­ar­co month­ly AATT is be­ing bound to a min­i­mum flow of 100,000 pas­sen­gers per month at a cost of US $5.10 cents
per pas­sen­ger.

If 60,000 or no pas­sen­gers come, the min­i­mum month­ly fee to be paid by AATT to the com­pa­ny would be US$510,000.

Un­der the sev­en-year con­tract that cost would be al­most US$43m


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