Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

Some $750,000 is be­ing forked out by the Gov­ern­ment to re­paint 60 of the black spank­ing new Fifth Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as and Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM) lux­u­ry fleet which has been hand­ed over to the Po­lice Ser­vice. The fleet is ex­pect­ed to form part of the crime-fight­ing ma­chin­ery aimed at boost­ing the Po­lice Ser­vice in an at­tempt to make a dent on ris­ing crime lev­els in the coun­try. A Sun­day Guardian probe re­vealed the Ve­hi­cle Main­te­nance Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (VM­COTT) has been hired to re­paint the ve­hi­cles from black to white at a cost of ap­prox­i­mate­ly $12,500 each. The Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion had pur­chased a to­tal of 110 ve­hi­cles at a cost of $42.463 mil­lion for del­e­gates at­tend­ing the sum­mit and CHOGM. The then gov­ern­ment spent $22.731 mil­lion to pur­chase ve­hi­cles for the sum­mit, while a fur­ther $19.731 mil­lion was forked out to pur­chase an ad­di­tion­al 90 ve­hi­cles for CHOGM.

A well-placed source from the Po­lice Ser­vice said while there were oth­er quo­ta­tions from au­to­mo­bile shops to do the job cheap­er, VM­COTT was giv­en the job. Con­tact­ed by Sun­day Guardian, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of VM­COTT Joel Browne con­firmed that his com­pa­ny was hired to re­paint the ve­hi­cles but re­fused to dis­close at what cost. "Yes it is true. It is an agree­ment, but we have to agree when the ac­tu­al work will start. I do not want to dis­close the fig­ure. It is a busi­ness re­la­tion­ship and it is not in­for­ma­tion I wish to dis­close," Browne said. Browne said VM­COTT had been man­dat­ed to de­liv­er sev­en ve­hi­cles per week. The project in­volves strip­ping and re­paint­ing the cars and jeeps from black to white. The ve­hi­cles un­der­go­ing the facelift are Maz­da 6, Hyundai San­ta Fe and the Toy­ota Pra­do.

Browne said two weeks ago VM­COTT sub­mit­ted an es­ti­mate for the job and re­ceived con­fir­ma­tion on Wednes­day. "All I know is that we were hired to paint the ve­hi­cles in white. I do not know if the Po­lice Ser­vice is do­ing the la­belling. The job will be com­plet­ed in ap­prox­i­mate­ly nine weeks." Asked if the com­pa­ny would be able to meet the Oc­to­ber dead­line, Browne said, "If we had con­cerns with our man­pow­er we would not have tak­en the job. The ve­hi­cles will be ready. I re­al­ly do not know what is the is­sue."

Min­istry's re­sponse

A re­sponse to ques­tions for­ward­ed to Min­is­ter of Works of Trans­port Jack Warn­er–un­der which VM­COTT falls–from his com­mu­ni­ca­tions di­rec­tor Fran­cis Joseph stat­ed: "The Hon Min­is­ter, Mr Jack Warn­er is un­able at this stage to an­swer these ques­tions."

Craig in the dark

How­ev­er, while Browne is await­ing word on when the job will com­mence, deputy com­mis­sion­er of po­lice Ray­mond Craig has de­nied that VM­COTT has been hired.

"Let me say some of the ve­hi­cles are be­ing re­paint­ed in po­lice colours but they are not be­ing re­paint­ed by VM­COTT. I am not aware the ve­hi­cles are be­ing re­paint­ed by VM­COTT. "All I will say is out of the 135 ve­hi­cles giv­en to the Po­lice Ser­vice 56 of those ve­hi­cles are be­ing paint­ed in the po­lice colours."

Asked if the ve­hi­cles will be re­paint­ed in white, Craig replied: "I do not know any­thing about paint­ing in any white base colour or any blue and white colour. What I am say­ing is some of the ve­hi­cles are be­ing re­paint­ed in the po­lice colours. The ve­hi­cles will be de­ployed to ma­jor high crime ar­eas to aug­ment the po­lice mo­bil­i­ty and po­lice sta­bil­i­ty in terms of re­spond­ing to crime." Craig abrupt­ly hung up the tele­phone when asked which com­pa­ny was re­paint­ing the ve­hi­cles.