Renu­ka Singh

Su­per In­dus­tri­al Ser­vices Ltd (SISL) is now seek­ing to out­source the con­struc­tion work on the $1.6 bil­lion Beetham Wa­ter Re­cy­cling Project. A con­fi­den­tial ten­der doc­u­ment, ob­tained by the Sun­day Guardian, showed the Cou­va-based SISL was seek­ing to re­tain oth­er com­pa­nies to be­gin the hefty project. The bid doc­u­ments car­ry a dead­line date of Sep­tem­ber 5, 2014, for all sub­mis­sions.

The con­tentious project has start­ed even as the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) has called for a Com­mis­sion of En­quiry (CoE) in­to the project and its award to SISL. The Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Com­mit­tee al­so called for the project to be halt­ed.

The project was award­ed to SISL on Feb­ru­ary 28, just be­fore the long Car­ni­val week­end.

In the sev­en-page In­struc­tion to Bid doc­u­ment, SISL de­tailed a ten-point scope of works which in­clud­ed every­thing from a bulk chem­i­cal stor­age area to ex­ter­nal works and land­scap­ing.While ques­tions have been raised about SISL's abil­i­ty to han­dle the range and scope of the mas­sive project, new in­for­ma­tion re­veals that SISL is cur­rent­ly seek­ing to out­source the con­tract, be­com­ing in­stead the project man­ag­er for the $1.6 bil­lion project.

"In ac­cor­dance with its con­tract with the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny of Trinidad and To­ba­go (NGC), SISL is re­quired to de­sign and build a wa­ter re­cy­cling fa­cil­i­ty ad­ja­cent to the ex­ist­ing Beetham Waste Wa­ter Treat­ment Plant (BWWTP), to­geth­er with the as­so­ci­at­ed pipelines and wa­ter stor­age fa­cil­i­ties," the bid con­tract stat­ed.The con­tract al­so not­ed that the req­ui­site works is ex­pect­ed to cross three ma­jor roads on cen­tral Trinidad and two rivers, the Ca­roni and the Guayamere.

"It has been spec­i­fied by NGC that the pipeline be laid un­der­ground which will re­quire HDD (Hor­i­zon­tal Di­rec­tion­al Drilling) at the ma­jor wa­ter cross­ings," the doc­u­ment stat­ed.Ac­cord­ing to the In­struc­tion to Bid­ders, the sub-con­trac­tors must re­spond with­in two days of the de­liv­ery of the bid doc­u­ments."No sub­let­ting of work is au­tho­rised," it states.

The doc­u­ment is al­so pref­aced with a strict con­fi­den­tial­i­ty clause which de­bars the hired con­trac­tor from mak­ing any "state­ments to the me­dia" or "dis­clos­ing any in­for­ma­tion to any unau­tho­rised per­son(s) whether on or off du­ty, dur­ing or long af­ter their pe­ri­od of as­sign­ment to the BWWRP fa­cil­i­ties."

When the PNM had called for the project to be halt­ed, Op­po­si­tion leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley wrote to Pres­i­dent An­tho­ny Car­mona on March 10, 2014, ask­ing him to use his au­thor­i­ty to "in­ves­ti­gate and call up­on" Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to ex­plain the cir­cum­stances and award by the Na­tion­al Gas Com­pa­ny/WASA of a con­tract for the De­sign and Build, Op­er­a­tion and Main­te­nance of the Beetham Wa­ter Re­cy­cling Plant to­geth­er with the as­so­ci­at­ed pipelines and wa­ter stor­age fa­cil­i­ties to SISL.

The Sun­day Guardian e-mailed SISL's project man­ag­er Joachim Rein­ert and one of the South-based com­pa­nies list­ed on the bid doc­u­ments. There was no re­sponse.The Sun­day Guardian al­so texted and called En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine for fur­ther clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the project, but he did not re­spond.

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai re­ferred to the bil­lion-dol­lar project briefly dur­ing the read­ing of the 2014/2015 bud­get ear­li­er this month. He said then that work was "be­ing vig­or­ous­ly pur­sued on es­tab­lish­ing a dai­ly sup­ply of wa­ter for all our cit­i­zens."Howai said, "With the com­ple­tion of the Beetham Waste Wa­ter Project, the In­dus­tri­al Es­tate at Point Lisas will ben­e­fit from a re­li­able and high qual­i­ty wa­ter sup­ply, there­by di­vert­ing ten mil­lion gal­lons per day of good-qual­i­ty potable wa­ter to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty."

About SISL

The com­pa­ny was found­ed by busi­ness­man Kr­ish­na Lal­la and has been linked to the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), of­ten be­ing de­scribed as a par­ty fi­nancier.

The com­pa­ny was award­ed the con­tract de­spite be­ing al­most $400 mil­lion more than that of its near­est com­peti­tor. SISL al­so beat out more sea­soned in­ter­na­tion­al com­pa­nies in­clud­ing Vin­ci Con­struc­tion, Kentz Caribbean and Latin Amer­i­ca, GLF Con­struc­tion, Tech­no­log­i­ca In­ter­con­ti­nen­tal, Aqualia In­fra­struc­turas, So­ci­ete Gen­erale Des Eaux, Dosh­ion Pri­vate Ltd, Uni­ver­sal Projects Ltd, Sev­en Seas Wa­ter (Trinidad), AST Clean Wa­ter Tech­nol­o­gy, Earth Com­pa­ny Ltd and GE Wa­ter.

PNM calls for CoE

PNM chair­man Franklin Khan and the par­ty's pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Faris Al Rawi yes­ter­day re­it­er­at­ed Row­ley's call for a CoE in­to the award of the Beetham Wa­ter Re­cy­cling Project to SISL.Speak­ing at yes­ter­day's post gen­er­al coun­cil press brief­ing, both men said that the Gov­ern­ment should but would not call for a CoE in­to this mat­ter.

They say that the Gov­ern­ment was fo­cus­ing on the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC) Las Al­turas project in or­der to tie Row­ley to an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in an elec­tion year."They fish­ing for some­thing, but the fish not bit­ing," Khan said."They will nev­er call an in­quiry in­to them­selves. We know that they will not call it," Al-Rawi added.

"There are many rea­sons why a Com­mis­sions of En­quiry needs to be called in­to this Gov­ern­ments man­age­ment, but we are con­fi­dent that they will not do that," he said.