The Re­quest for Pro­pos­als (RF­Ps) is­sued for the con­struc­tion of the new ANR Robin­son air­port has been can­celled.

Gov­ern­ment has or­dered that the project be re­tendered and has now tak­en re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for fi­nanc­ing the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar air­port up­grades.

Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands that the RF­Ps were can­celled since last month and Gov­ern­ment man­dat­ed the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (NID­CO) to re­tender for the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar project. It was re­vealed that on­ly one bid­der re­spond­ed to the RF­Ps—Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion Cor­po­ra­tion.

Ac­cord­ing to in­for­ma­tion re­ceived by Guardian Me­dia, the new ten­der, which went out to pre-qual­i­fied com­pa­nies on Mon­day, changed from a de­sign/fi­nance/con­struct RFP and is now bro­ken in­to two sep­a­rate parts.

Last week, Guardian Me­dia sought con­fir­ma­tion from Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Stu­art Young.

Nei­ther men re­spond­ed to What­sApp mes­sages nor text mes­sages.

On Thurs­day chair­man of NID­CO, Her­bert George con­firmed the can­cel­la­tion of the orig­i­nal RFP and ex­plained the con­di­tions of the new ten­der.

"This new ten­der is split in­to two parts," he said.

"The first part is the main works for the new sec­tion of the air­port and the sec­ond one is for the up­grade of the ex­ist­ing fa­cil­i­ty."

The first ten­der is turn key, which means that the se­lect­ed con­trac­tor will be re­spon­si­ble for the de­sign/con­struc­tion and com­mis­sion­ing of the new build­ing, while the sec­ond ten­der is de­sign/build.

"Both as­pects would be fund­ed by the Gov­ern­ment," George said.

The ten­ders are open to both lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al con­trac­tors. It was re­tendered on June 11.

Gov­ern­ment had ini­tial­ly pegged com­ple­tion of the project by De­cem­ber 2020 and George said he was hop­ing to meet that dead­line.

The RF­Ps were can­celled around the same time that con­struc­tion was ex­pect­ed to be­gin.

In Jan­u­ary, Gov­ern­ment ap­proved the con­struc­tion of a new ter­mi­nal build­ing and sup­port­ing in­fra­struc­ture for the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in Crown Point, To­ba­go.

It ap­point­ed NID­CO to over­see and man­age the project.

Last year, Im­bert an­nounced that the Cab­i­net ap­proved the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the pro­cure­ment phase for the con­struc­tion of the new ter­mi­nal build­ing and as­so­ci­at­ed works for the new air­port.

He said then that Cab­i­net hoped to have a con­tract for con­struc­tion of the ter­mi­nal award­ed by Au­gust 2018 with con­struc­tion start­ing be­fore the end of the year.

That did not hap­pen.

Im­bert said then that he ex­pect­ed that the new fa­cil­i­ty will be com­plet­ed by 2020. At that time, the cost was pegged at $500 mil­lion (TT) ex­clud­ing the cost of land ac­qui­si­tion.

By April 2019, NID­CO was en­gaged in a con­tentious bat­tle for land ac­qui­si­tion. The mat­ter of ac­quir­ing lands has so far been met with re­sis­tance by the res­i­dents of the Bon Ac­cord/Crowne Point area who are in the path of the pro­posed ex­pan­sion.

In April 2019, NID­CO was forced to is­sue a state­ment cor­rect­ing re­ports in the me­dia about the land ac­qui­si­tion