Renu­ka Singh

The Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny (NGC) has fired Su­per In­dus­tri­al Ser­vices Ltd (SIS) from the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar Beetham Wa­ter Re­cy­cling Plant.

In a state­ment from the State com­pa­ny yes­ter­day, act­ing NGC pres­i­dent Maria Thorne said the con­tract was ex­pect­ed to be com­plet­ed by Oc­to­ber 21, 2015, but "to date SIS, the con­trac­tor, has failed to com­plete the project.

"NGC and its team have con­tin­u­ous­ly ex­ert­ed best ef­forts to en­sure the stip­u­lat­ed con­trac­tu­al terms are sat­is­fied.

"Af­ter care­ful de­lib­er­a­tion, NGC has ex­er­cised its right to ter­mi­nate the con­tract with SIS. This de­ci­sion was prompt­ed by our fidu­cia­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to safe­guard the in­ter­ests and as­sets of the com­pa­ny," the NGC re­lease said.

One week ago, the T&T Guardian re­port­ed that the con­tentious mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar con­tract was un­der re­view by the new­ly-ap­point­ed board of di­rec­tors, head­ed by Ger­ry Brooks.

Ac­cord­ing to yes­ter­day's re­lease, SIS, the pre­ferred con­trac­tor un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion, in­di­cat­ed to NGC it was "un­able to con­tin­ue the works" in ac­cor­dance with the con­tract.

Last Sep­tem­ber, the T&T Guardian had re­port­ed that SIS had out­sourced por­tions of the project to a South-based com­pa­ny. In those bid doc­u­ments, SIS de­tailed a ten-point plan to out­source work for the hor­i­zon­tal drilling as­pect of the project. SIS had then de­fend­ed its abil­i­ty to com­plete the project.

This lat­est de­vel­op­ment comes just weeks af­ter the new board stepped in af­ter the Sep­tem­ber 7 gen­er­al elec­tion. It was un­der the tenure of the for­mer pres­i­dent, In­dar Ma­haraj, that the bil­lion-dol­lar project was ap­proved. Ma­haraj, in a brief tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, re­fused to com­ment on the quashed con­tract.

"I have been out of the coun­try for the last six weeks. It would be im­prop­er to com­ment on it," Ma­haraj said.

In me­dia re­ports over the past year, it was re­vealed that NGC had made sev­er­al month­ly mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar pay­ments to SIS de­spite the con­trac­tor's slow pace of de­liv­ery.

In Ju­ly, the T&T Guardian re­port­ed that SIS had been paid as much as $887 mil­lion of the con­tract, which was on­ly 66.1 per cent com­plet­ed. It was al­so re­port­ed then that a fur­ther US$32.4 mil­lion was paid to SIS in the form of a mo­bil­i­sa­tion fee which was not a part of the con­tract with NGC.

The NGC had then de­fend­ed the pay­ment sched­ule, say­ing that the mo­bil­i­sa­tion fee was sup­posed to be re­paid in tranch­es, the first of which was due in Au­gust. The State com­pa­ny had con­firmed then that de­spite the mil­lions paid to SIS, the Beetham Waste Wa­ter project was on­ly 42 per cent com­plet­ed at that time.

Ac­cord­ing to yes­ter­day's me­dia re­lease, NGC and SIS en­tered in­to a con­tract on March 10, 2014 for the de­sign and build of the Beetham Wa­ter Re­cy­cling Plant for the val­ue of US$162,055,318.77.

Last week, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley all but called for the sus­pen­sion of the project, say­ing he had writ­ten to Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona to get in­volved and use the Con­sti­tu­tion to force then prime min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to an­swer ques­tions on the hush-hush project.

"I pre­sent­ed the ev­i­dence and I iden­ti­fied a clear con­flict of de­ci­sion-mak­ing in­volv­ing the peo­ple at WASA (Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty) and the same peo­ple at NGC," Row­ley said in a text ex­change then.

He was re­fer­ring to re­ports that the then chair­man of WASA was the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer at NGC at the time that the con­tract was award­ed.

For­mer en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine, who was a vo­cal sup­port­er of the con­tract, could not be reached for com­ment yes­ter­day as calls to his cell­phone went unan­swered and he did not re­turn calls.

More in­fo

Last year, when ques­tions were raised about the award of the mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar con­tract to Su­per In­dus­tri­al Ser­vices Ltd (SIS), then en­er­gy min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine had de­fend­ed the com­pa­ny and the award.

In 2014, Ram­nar­ine had or­dered a re­port in­to the award of the con­tract and then ex­plained his find­ings in Par­lia­ment.

He said then that it was the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny board of di­rec­tors who were re­spon­si­ble for the fi­nal de­ci­sion and that SIS was cho­sen be­cause it topped the in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers vy­ing for the project.

He al­so said SIS had "scored 77.93 per cent in the tech­ni­cal eval­u­a­tion" and that it had "pro­posed a su­pe­ri­or pipeline method­ol­o­gy."

He said too that SIS had sub­mit­ted a "su­pe­ri­or con­struc­tion pro­gramme" and that its in­for­ma­tion sub­mit­ted on "re­verse os­mo­sis was of su­pe­ri­or qual­i­ty."

Ram­nar­ine said SIS was al­so giv­en the nod be­cause its pro­pos­al had "greater lo­cal con­tent" and its de­sign team had "ex­ten­sive mem­brane plant ex­pe­ri­ence."