Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal says it rais­es eye­brows that the Prime Min­is­ter’s friend, busi­ness­man Al­lan Warn­er, is one of the lo­cal con­trac­tors sup­ply­ing con­crete for the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port ex­pan­sion project in To­ba­go.

This was re­vealed in a Sun­day Guardian ex­clu­sive sto­ry.

Mooni­lal, in an in­ter­view yes­ter­day, said it was an in­ter­est­ing de­vel­op­ment as UDe­COTT falls un­der the purview of Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

“No­body has a con­cern that the Prime Min­is­ter’s golf­ing part­ners are all em­bed­ded in strate­gic state en­ter­pris­es as agents of those en­ter­pris­es or as con­trac­tors with­in those en­ter­pris­es? These are mat­ters that this Prime Min­is­ter and the Gov­ern­ment have con­demned for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tions for. I be­lieve that this en­tire sor­did af­fair must be re­viewed. There must be a prop­er and in­de­pen­dent in­quiry in­to the con­struc­tion of that air­port ter­mi­nal, which is now a scan­dalous project,” he said.

Mooni­lal not­ed that in the past, Row­ley and the Gov­ern­ment had tak­en for­mer UNC of­fi­cials to court, where there were claims of for­mer min­is­ters and of­fi­cials be­ing friend­ly and hav­ing so­cial re­la­tions with con­trac­tors.

“You can­not de­bar or dis­qual­i­fy con­trac­tors or busi­ness­es be­cause of their friend­ship with gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. Af­ter all, it is a small is­land we live on. But what is hap­pen­ing is, I’m point­ing out the hypocrisy of the Prime Min­is­ter that would go to court in oth­er mat­ters and claim friend­ly re­la­tions with con­trac­tors by for­mer of­fi­cials of the gov­ern­ment,” the MP lament­ed.

Al­so com­ment­ing on the is­sue was for­mer Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Mikey Joseph. Un­like Mooni­lal he said he sees noth­ing wrong with Warn­er do­ing busi­ness projects be­cause he is the friend of the Prime Min­is­ter.

“We as con­trac­tors, as long as we de­ter­mine we want to take the risk that the main con­trac­tor or the client of­fers, we tend to go af­ter projects. So, I don’t see any­thing wrong with that,” Joseph said.

He said there are very few pre-mixed con­crete pro­duc­ers in To­ba­go and out of the few of them, he does not be­lieve 50 per cent or so con­sis­tent­ly pro­duces con­crete of the qual­i­ty that would be re­quired for a project like that.

“That’s from my ex­pe­ri­ence be­cause I cam­paign in To­ba­go a lot. Most of the projects and the sup­ply and con­crete start­ed a long time ago, years ago, as far as I would know be­cause there were times we had a project do­ing and it had to be de­layed be­cause they had to pro­vide con­crete across to the air­port,” Joseph dis­closed.

Warn­er, who is charged with il­le­gal quar­ry­ing, has been sub­con­tract­ed by Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion (Caribbean) Ltd.

Giv­ing his views on the il­le­gal quar­ry­ing is­sue, which is be­fore the court, Joseph said, “The il­le­gal quar­ry­ing and all the oth­er as­pects of it, that is a moot point in my view. If you run a prop­er in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to quar­ry­ing in Trinidad and To­ba­go, you’ll find a lot of us, even es­tab­lished peo­ple with quar­ries, don’t al­ways do the right thing. That’s all I can say. The mat­ter is be­fore the court. He’s been charged, but that shouldn’t af­fect the oth­er busi­ness­es such as the two pri­vate com­pa­nies.”

On­ly last week, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley de­fend­ed Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert amidst calls for his res­ig­na­tion from the Op­po­si­tion, for al­leged­ly at­tempt­ing to mis­lead the pub­lic by un­der­stat­ing the cost over­runs for the ANR Robin­son Air­port ex­pan­sion project.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had ini­tial­ly al­leged the cost over­runs to be around $431 mil­lion. How­ev­er, Min­is­ter Im­bert, re­spond­ing a leaked Cab­i­net note, re­vealed the cost over­run was clos­er to TT$118 mil­lion (US$17.5 mil­lion). He ini­tial­ly said it was US $2.5 mil­lion.