Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC) pres­i­dent Fazir Khan says the is­sue of cost over­runs on gov­ern­ment con­tracts is al­so a mat­ter for the Of­fice of the Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tor (OPR) to ad­dress.

He made the com­ment in the wake of the cur­rent con­tro­ver­sy sur­round­ing the ANR Robin­son Air­port de­vel­op­ment project in To­ba­go.

Last week, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert en­gaged in a pub­lic de­bate over the cost over­runs on the project.

Af­ter ini­tial­ly in­di­cat­ing that the over­runs were on­ly $17 mil­lion, Im­bert ad­mit­ted to an er­ror and ad­just­ed the fig­ure to $118 mil­lion in over­runs.

The project, which was de­layed by COVID-19 and land ac­qui­si­tion is­sues, was orig­i­nal­ly billed at $1.286 bil­lion and in­creased to $1.7 bil­lion. It is ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by June 2025.

Ad­dress­ing the is­sue, Khan said while the con­tract was signed be­fore the OPR re­ceived its le­gal au­thor­i­ty, it does have some le­gal re­mit to re­view and re­port on all gov­ern­ment con­tracts.

“The OPR has ju­ris­dic­tion to in­ves­ti­gate and re­view all on­go­ing gov­ern­ment con­tracts un­der Sec­tion 13 (j) and re­port on them in their An­nu­al Re­view un­der Sec­tion 24 of the said Act. I am still check­ing the OPR An­nu­al Re­port is­sued in April 2024 to see what it re­veals, if any­thing, about this Chi­na Rail­way con­tract,” Khan said.

“How­ev­er, the pub­lic should be aware the coun­try now has an in­de­pen­dent body es­tab­lished in law, which has a man­date to not on­ly in­ves­ti­gate and re­port on such mat­ters (like sig­nif­i­cant cost over­runs on any State Con­tract), but should it find ev­i­dence of malfea­sance, the OPR has the pow­er un­der the new laws to bring puni­tive ac­tion to hold those ac­count­able for mis­use of pub­lic funds.”

Al­so ad­dress­ing the is­sue, for­mer Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Mikey Joseph said the is­sue of cost over­runs in the con­struc­tion of the air­port was a po­lit­i­cal nui­sance, as most con­tracts have cost fluc­tu­a­tions de­pend­ing on what is added or re­moved.

Asked about the in­creased costs, Joseph said: “This is­sue of cost over­runs in any project is a po­lit­i­cal term. There is no way in any con­tract, or any sys­tem used for build­ings, it talks about cost over­runs. On­ly politi­cians talk that non­sense. When you have a project and you have a con­tract, you have spe­cif­ic terms and con­di­tions and with­in that there are vari­a­tions.”

Joseph said the cost over­runs could have been due to the Gov­ern­ment ad­just­ing parts of the con­tract. He said with a de­sign-build con­tract, for ex­am­ple, the changes by the gov­ern­ment must come at a cost.

“If it is a de­sign-build, then you have to as­sume that it is ei­ther the client’s brief that was in­suf­fi­cient and the client recog­nised he missed out cer­tain things and it is now be­ing in­clud­ed, or they recog­nised they want to im­prove or they want to change or in­crease the scope of works.”