KEVON FELMINE

Se­nior Re­porter

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

The Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Nid­co) had to pay em­bat­tled Brazil­ian firm, Con­stru­to­ra OAS, $161 mil­lion in work stop­page claims, as the land ac­qui­si­tion for the Solomon Ho­choy High­way Ex­ten­sion to Point Fortin project was in­com­plete at the time.

Dur­ing yes­ter­day’s sit­ting of the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) on Land and Phys­i­cal In­fra­struc­ture, Nid­co chair­man Her­bert George said in­clud­ed in that fig­ure was $26 mil­lion for work stop­pages caused by com­mu­ni­ty protests dur­ing the con­struc­tion. The sit­ting was the JSC’s sec­ond ses­sion on an in­quiry in­to the 2023 Nid­co re­port on “The Saga of the Solomon Ho­choy High­way Ex­ten­sion to Point Fortin project from 2010 to 2023. An ac­count of the de­vel­op­ment and ex­e­cu­tion of the largest in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment project im­ple­ment­ed in T&T”. JSC mem­bers Kennedy Richards Jr, Anil Roberts, and Bar­ry Padarath were ab­sent from the ses­sion.

Re­spond­ing to JSC chair­man De­oroop Teemal’s ques­tion on whether Nid­co over­paid OAS for the project, George said Nid­co treat­ed the con­trac­tor well, as it le­git­i­mate­ly re­ceived a lot of mon­ey for rea­sons the State com­pa­ny should avoid go­ing for­ward.

“OAS was paid lots of mon­ey for which we did not get pro­duc­tive work in claims that a con­trac­tor can make, giv­en the cir­cum­stances. We need to man­age that as we go for­ward. We must not start these jobs too ear­ly. We must look at the land ac­qui­si­tion as­pect of it and let it pro­ceed for some time be­fore we start the ac­tu­al con­struc­tion work,” George said.

With $500 mil­lion spent on land ac­qui­si­tion, the Gov­ern­ment en­gaged in pri­vate treaty ne­go­ti­a­tions with prop­er­ty own­ers along the right-of-way. But even af­ter com­pen­sat­ing prop­er­ty own­ers, George said, it took time for some to va­cate the premis­es. In some cas­es, res­i­dents were not ready to leave or had nowhere to go. Nid­co de­cid­ed to pay for six months of rental ac­com­mo­da­tion for those who qual­i­fied, but in some cas­es, they pro­longed it to be­tween 12 and 18 months. While some peo­ple re­ceived leas­es to prop­er­ties in Pe­tit Morne, Ste Madeleine and Cedar Hill, Princes Town, they had to wait for the State to de­vel­op the land.

Re­spond­ing to JSC mem­ber Symon De No­bri­ga on whether there were con­cerns about the land ac­qui­si­tion raised be­fore the con­tract agree­ment, George said there was a recog­ni­tion that the Gov­ern­ment could not pro­vide the en­tire site at the com­mence­ment of the project. It told the con­trac­tor it could have Gol­con­da to Debe im­me­di­ate­ly, while the Godineau Riv­er to Mon De­sir would fol­low months lat­er. He said this was too op­ti­mistic when the aim re­quired mov­ing hun­dreds of peo­ple.

“That was just op­ti­mism speak­ing with­out any ba­sis be­cause that has not hap­pened be­fore, and with the num­ber of peo­ple you are mov­ing, you can­not do it overnight. No­body is there wait­ing for you to come and of­fer them com­pen­sa­tion so they will move. Peo­ple told you ‘I have been here for so many years. My navel string cut there’.”

George said there were many oil wells to cap along the ROW, which was not in the con­trac­tor’s scope of work. He said Petrotrin had to get this done, and de­spite ap­ply­ing and pay­ing for the cap­ping, con­trac­tors took a long time to com­plete the job.

In the ear­ly con­struc­tion pe­ri­od, sev­er­al protests over the high­way caused work to shut down. There were al­so $9 mil­lion paid to OAS for price es­ca­la­tion, an­oth­er con­tentious is­sue.

George said Nid­co’s up­front pay­ment to OAS was “huge”, even above the ten per cent ini­tial­ly of­fered dur­ing the ten­der process. Doc­u­ments found at Nid­co showed a Cab­i­net in­struc­tion to in­crease the ad­vance pay­ment at OAS’ re­quest. George said the up­front pay­ment was not tied to work done, as op­posed to us­ing a con­trac­tor who would have tak­en a small­er ad­vance pay­ment and col­lect­ed the re­main­der over the con­struc­tion pe­ri­od. While he did not con­demn this agree­ment, he said it even­tu­al­ly led to Nid­co pay­ing a large chunk of the con­tract sum. When Nid­co ter­mi­nat­ed the con­trac­tor in 2016, the pay­ment did not re­flect the per­cent­age of work done.

Among the is­sues dis­cussed was a lack of doc­u­men­ta­tion sup­port­ing var­i­ous de­ci­sions at Nid­co dur­ing the ear­ly phase of the project, with the board deemed as hav­ing to rub­ber stamp de­ci­sions al­ready tak­en by oth­ers. It in­clud­ed per­mis­sion for OAS to mo­bilise on-site be­fore get­ting its Let­ter of In­tent to com­mence work and even sub­mit­ting claims for price es­ca­la­tion be­fore the al­lot­ted pe­ri­od. George agreed with JSC mem­ber Renu­ka Sagram­s­ingh-Sook­lal that it ap­peared OAS had a pow­er­ful en­abler, al­low­ing it spe­cial priv­i­leges to by­pass stan­dard pro­ce­dures. He said part of Nid­co might not have been par­ty to the en­abling team and did not be­lieve it was the then-board of di­rec­tors. He said mem­bers were very hard-nosed to call for due dili­gence.