The board of T&T Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion (T&TEC) has main­tained it act­ed prop­er­ly to en­sure the com­mis­sion's ten­der­ing process is above board. It made the de­c­la­ra­tion in an ad­ver­tise­ment pub­lished to­day about the award of an $8 mil­lion con­tract which was un­earthed in an in­ves­tiga­tive re­port by the Sun­day Guardian.

The state­ment said:?"The en­tire T&TEC board wish­es to make it abun­dant­ly clear that they are not pre­pared to serve as rub­ber stamps of man­age­ment's re­quest. "The board has not­ed with se­ri­ous con­cern that when prop­er pro­ce­dures are not fol­lowed and board ob­jec­tions are made, the in­for­ma­tion quick­ly reach­es to the print and elec­tron­ic me­dia for pub­lic con­sump­tion in a very dis­tort­ed and bi­ased man­ner."

In the re­lease, the board re­quest­ed an apol­o­gy from this news­pa­per, claim­ing that its cor­po­rate im­age was im­prop­er­ly im­pugned and that the sto­ry con­tained "sev­er­al se­ri­ous in­ac­cu­ra­cies and mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions." It did not spec­i­fy what the in­ac­cu­ra­cies and mis­rep­re­sen­ta­tions were.

The re­port fo­cused on a con­tract which was award­ed last year for land-ac­qui­si­tion con­sul­tan­cy ser­vices to ac­quire land from Brechin Cas­tle to La Brea Union Es­tate; Debe to Pe­nal; and San Raphael to Waller­field to Pin­to Road cor­ri­dors. The con­tract was even­tu­al­ly award­ed to Con­sor­tium Land Ac­qui­si­tion Sys­tems Spe­cial­ists (Class) for a fee of $8,421,105.

The re­port al­leged that the prop­er ten­der­ing process was not fol­lowed in the award of the con­tract as Class was not a le­gal part­ner­ship at the time the con­tract was award­ed but a lim­it­ed-li­a­bil­i­ty com­pa­ny. T&TEC's eval­u­a­tion team not­ed at the time: "The name of the or­gan­i­sa­tion as de­fined in the in­for­ma­tion of the ten­der is not list­ed as Con­sor­tium of Land Ac­qui­si­tion Sys­tems Spe­cial­ists but refers to Dharam­c­hand De­poo, Vin­dra Ma­haraj and Shob­na Per­sad (DMP).

"As stat­ed in DMP's let­ter of Oc­to­ber 21, 2011, the three at­tor­neys will form a part­ner­ship, if suc­cess­ful, the com­mis­sion will en­ter in­to an agree­ment/con­tract." Con­tact­ed by the Sun­day Guardian, se­nior part­ner of DMP Shob­na Per­sad said: "We have formed a part­ner­ship,"?but did not say when the part­ner­ship was formed.

The con­tract was award­ed to?ACQ by a ten­ders com­mit­tee, head­ed by T&TEC chair­man Omar Khan, who was re­placed by Sushilla Ramkissoon-Mark in April this year. Con­tact­ed for a re­sponse, Khan chose not to com­ment.

The Sun­day Guardian in­ter­viewed Ramkissoon-Mark, and quot­ed her as say­ing: "Class's de­liv­ery time was the short­est. I think they were al­so amongst the cheap­est. In terms of the pro­cure­ment phi­los­o­phy of the com­mis­sion in op­ti­mis­ing val­ue for dol­lar we thought it jus­ti­fied on that ba­sis."

The de­ci­sion was re­port­ed­ly tak­en af­ter the board re­ceived le­gal ad­vice on the is­sue. The board's state­ment gives fur­ther de­tails to jus­ti­fy the award, adding: "Sig­nif­i­cant weight was al­so at­tached to the fact that the se­lect­ed part­ner­ship of at­tor­neys were ex­pe­ri­enced at­tor­neys who ap­peared to the com­mit­tee to have the req­ui­site ca­pa­bil­i­ties of ex­e­cut­ing this scope of work."

The Sun­day Guardian sto­ry al­so ad­dressed the award of pre­vi­ous con­tracts to an­oth­er com­pa­ny, Row Ser­vices Ltd, which lat­er formed a part­ner­ship called ACQ and As­so­ciates. In the sto­ry, Ramkissoon-Mark was quot­ed as be­ing high­ly crit­i­cal of the process used to make ear­li­er awards to Row Ser­vices.

"No ten­der­ing process was fol­lowed and no sys­tems were put in place. Ba­si­cal­ly, it was a run­away horse that could not with­stand scruti­ny," she said. "As a re­sult, the board moved to put sys­tems in place and in­tro­duced a fair sys­tem of pub­lic ten­der­ing where­by this par­tic­u­lar con­tract went out for pub­lic ten­der­ing."

The ad­ver­tise­ment re­peat­ed the claim that there were dis­crep­an­cies in sev­er­al con­tracts which T&TEC?had award­ed to Row in the past. "Up­on tak­ing of­fice on No­vem­ber 2010, the present board was con­front­ed with the mat­ter of very large out­stand­ing pay­ments for Row for land-ac­qui­si­tion ser­vices," the re­lease said. Due to the size of the out­stand­ing pay­ments the board ini­ti­at­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion.