SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

The State would have to pay al­most $1 bil­lion to landown­ers whose prop­er­ties are in the di­rect path of the ex­ten­sion of the San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin High­way.

The rev­e­la­tion was made by chair­man of the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Nid­co) Her­bert George in an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia at his of­fice in El So­cor­ro, San Juan.

This comes three months af­ter Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Stu­art Young said Cab­i­net will ini­ti­ate a com­mis­sion of en­quiry (CoE) to ex­am­ine the cir­cum­stances in which $500 mil­lion was paid to home­own­ers to ac­quire land for the ex­ten­sion of the high­way.

The com­mis­sion is to be chaired by re­tired judge Se­bas­t­ian Ven­tour.

Young re­vealed that over 520 prop­er­ties were ac­quired and paid for by the State while 459 prop­er­ties which are in the path of the 47 kilo­me­tre high­way still had to be ac­quired .

In April, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley turned the sod for the con­tract at a cost of $1.89 bil­lion. Five lo­cal con­trac­tors were award­ed the con­tract.

The four-lane high­way will be com­plet­ed in the first quar­ter of 2021.

George said what was alarm­ing about the project un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship (PP) gov­ern­ment was “mega set­tle­ments. There were six or eight of them. There was one area that raised eye­brows.”

Un­der the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion the project’s bud­get was $7.5 bil­lion.

Con­struc­to­ra OAS was award­ed a $5.2 bil­lion con­tract for the project of which $3.8 bil­lion was paid.

In 2016, the Gov­ern­ment ter­mi­nat­ed OAS’ con­tract and was able to re­cov­er $1 bil­lion of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey through the court.

The fol­low­ing year, Nid­co is­sued fresh con­tracts to five lo­cal con­trac­tors to restart the bil­lion-dol­lar high­way.

George said un­der the PP, the State ap­proached one landown­er who was able to get Town and Coun­try Plan­ning Di­vi­sion’s (TCPD) ap­proval for his prop­er­ty to be de­vel­oped in­to a com­mer­cial busi­ness.

George said the landown­er was treat­ed as though TCPD’s de­vel­op­men­tal ap­proval was go­ing to cost him mil­lions of dol­lars in dis­tur­bance cost and loss­es and sub­mit­ted a hefty claim.

“So at the end of the day a piece of swamp land that had ab­solute­ly noth­ing on it...the dis­tur­bances came up to twen­ty-some­thing mil­lion dol­lars.”

When the landown­ers’ claim was put for­ward George said, “Nid­co just de­cid­ed not to pay it...that we need­ed to have it re­viewed. So this was flagged.”

In an­oth­er case, George said a landown­er had put in a claim for his land and dis­tur­bance cost at $75 mil­lion.

He on­ly re­ceived “twen­ty-some­thing mil­lion dol­lars” for the land be­fore 2015.

When the dis­tur­bance cost came be­fore Nid­co for pay­ment, George said it was shut down.

“This was an up­per-tier ques­tion­able ac­tion. So we asked for that to be re­viewed again.”

George said the cost to these mega prop­er­ties “were just out­ra­geous. So that is one as­pect that has to be in­ves­ti­gat­ed.”

He said the Gov­ern­ment al­so gave out lands to peo­ple who had to be re­lo­cat­ed.

If an af­fect­ed house­hold had four mem­bers of a fam­i­ly each above the age of 18, George said the en­tire fam­i­ly was to be grant­ed a lot of land.

How­ev­er, each mem­ber in the fam­i­ly was giv­en land.

“That is what we found. It was just not sit­ting right with us. So we just flagged it.”

These mat­ters, George said will be dealt with in the CoE.

In go­ing for­ward, George said more cau­tion with pub­lic mon­ey need­ed to take place.

George said there was a cap of $800 mil­lion for “land ac­qui­si­tion and out­reach,” with the project.

He said $100 mil­lion went to­wards out­reach with the re­main­ing $700 mil­lion to be hand­ed out to prop­er­ty own­ers who sur­ren­dered their lands to the State.

“So far $527 mil­lion has al­ready been paid (in land ac­qui­si­tion),” George said.

How­ev­er, he said the Gov­ern­ment still has to ac­quire and pay for prop­er­ties “which was work­ing up to $400 and some­thing mil­lion. So we still have $400 and some­thing mil­lion to pay for new prop­er­ties. All the prop­er­ties were not ac­quired and paid for. We have not re­al­ly sat and set­tled with all own­ers.”

George said when one cal­cu­lates the to­tal bill that is ex­pect­ed to paid to landown­ers from San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin the fig­ure would be “close to 1 bil­lion dol­lars” bear­ing in mind the $500 mil­lion that have al­ready been hand­ed out to pre­vi­ous landown­ers.

He said Nid­co has no in­ten­tion of pay­ing for agri­cul­tur­al and man­grove lands be­yond its val­ue.

“So how could the cost be so much? It is un­usu­al and at worst it was a reck­less ap­pli­ca­tion of the pub­lic funds and peo­ple need­ed to ex­er­cise greater care and cau­tion.”

When Gov­ern­ment de­cides to do a project, George said one would not as­sume scams and reck­less spenders to ex­e­cute the project.

“If that hap­pens you have to find them out and then deal with them.”

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs Fitzger­ald Hinds, in his bud­get con­tri­bu­tion in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, spoke about the project, stat­ing “there was a tremen­dous amount of lit­i­ga­tion tak­ing place aris­ing out of land ac­qui­si­tion in those mat­ters. There are hun­dreds of prop­er­ties that were ac­quired that is not need­ed for the project.”

Hinds said prop­er­ties that the State paid for “the peo­ple stayed there...they get paid again.”