Renu­ka Singh

renu­ka.singh@guardian.co.tt

The Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Nid­co) has tak­en on a $300 mil­lion loan to buy the lands sur­round­ing To­ba­go’s ANR Robin­son Air­port. The State is stand­ing as a guar­an­tor on this loan agree­ment be­tween Nid­co and Sco­tia­bank.

Ac­cord­ing to a let­ter, dat­ed De­cem­ber 20 and signed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, Nid­co bor­rowed the mon­ey to “fa­cil­i­tate the pay­ment to prop­er­ty own­ers/oc­cu­piers about lands iden­ti­fied for the con­struc­tion of the new ter­mi­nal and as­so­ci­at­ed works at the ANR Robin­son Air­port, To­ba­go.

“I al­so con­firm that the Gov­ern­ment of the Re­pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go has agreed to ap­prove the fund­ing of $300,000,000 through a six-year fixed-rate loan with Sco­tia­bank Trinidad and To­ba­go and that the fixed-rate loan is ful­ly guar­an­teed by the Gov­ern­ment,” Im­bert said in the let­ter.

Nid­co chair­man Her­bert George con­firmed that the loan ap­proval was re­ceived on De­cem­ber 27 but di­rect­ed fur­ther queries on the is­sue to Nid­co pres­i­dent Es­ther Farmer. She di­rect­ed all ques­tions to Nid­co’s com­mu­ni­ca­tion de­part­ment.

Last Sep­tem­ber, Nid­co be­gan ac­quir­ing lands for the air­port ex­pan­sion and served Sec­tion 4 le­gal no­tices to en­sure they are va­cat­ed by next month. The com­pa­ny said then that pay­ment of com­pen­sa­tion would be­gin in mid to late Oc­to­ber 2019, “once set­tle­ment has been reached with the state”.

But ac­cord­ing to Nid­co now, there seems to have been no change.

“With re­spect to the homes that have al­ready ac­cept­ed and moved, the process has not yet reached the stage of ne­go­ti­a­tion and set­tle­ment,” the com­pa­ny said. “The land ac­qui­si­tion process has be­gun and is on­go­ing.”

Nid­co is ne­go­ti­at­ing with 56 landown­ers who will be af­fect­ed by the up­grades to the air­port. How­ev­er, while the com­pa­ny is as­sum­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the loan ne­go­ti­a­tions for pay­ment of the $300 mil­lion re­mains with the Gov­ern­ment.

“The State will en­ter in­to the ne­go­ti­a­tion process with the prop­er­ty own­ers in or­der to de­ter­mine how much mon­ey has been al­lo­cat­ed,” Nid­co said.

News of this loan comes even as the State is call­ing for a com­mis­sion of en­quiry (CoE) in­to the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion’s spend­ing on land ac­qui­si­tion for the bil­lion-dol­lar Point Fortin high­way ex­ten­sion. Last Ju­ly, Stu­art Young, who was then the Min­is­ter of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, an­nounced that Cab­i­net planned to ini­ti­ate the en­quiry to ex­am­ine the cir­cum­stances in which more than $500 mil­li­on was paid to home­own­ers to ac­quire land for the ex­ten­sion of the high­way from San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin.

For­mer mem­ber of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, Jus­tice Se­bas­t­ian Ven­tour, and is ex­pect­ed to de­ter­mine whether crim­i­nal or civ­il pro­ceed­in­gs should be brought against those in­volved, in­clud­ing a Cab­i­net com­mit­tee head­ed by for­mer prime min­is­ter Ka­mla Per­sad-Biss­es­sar.

At that time, Young said a re­port had been re­quest­ed by the Min­istry of Works fol­low­ing a study it con­duct­ed in­to com­pen­sa­tion for the high­way ex­ten­sion project which found that while $800 mil­li­on was al­lo­cat­ed for land ac­qui­si­tion, more $500 mil­li­on had al­ready been spent. al­though the process of land ac­qui­si­tion is not near com­ple­tion.

More than 520 prop­er­ties were ac­quired and paid for by the state and there are still 459 prop­er­ties to be ac­quired.

Young said Gov­ern­ment was con­cerned about the func­tions of a min­is­te­r­i­al over­sight com­mit­tee chaired by Per­sad-Biss­es­sar which presided over the project’s fund­ing, time-de­liv­ery, and oth­er as­pects. Land ac­qui­si­tion pay­ments were halt­ed and a Works Min­istry tech­ni­cal team was asked to do a re­port on com­pen­sa­tion for the project.

The study found that the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship min­is­te­r­i­al com­mit­tee hired pri­vate en­ti­ties and lawyers to han­dle com­pen­sa­tion ne­go­ti­a­tions and some of the com­pen­sa­tion ap­peared ex­ces­sive.

The CoE will al­so in­quire in­to whether or not the min­is­te­r­i­al com­mit­tee ful­filled its man­date, whether there was any breach of du­ties and whether any crim­i­nal, civ­il pro­ceed­in­gs should be ini­ti­at­ed.

Last month, af­ter a six-month de­lay, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley con­firmed that the CoE will be­gin this month. How­ev­er, Ven­tour said he has heard noth­ing from the State about the CoE and with all the pre­lim­i­nary work that still need­ed to be com­plet­ed be­fore a CoE could start, he fore­saw at least a Feb­ru­ary start date.

Guardian Me­dia mes­saged Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young for an up­date on the CoE and was di­rect­ed to At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi who did not re­spond to calls or texts.