Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

For­mer Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les is de­fend­ing the award of a $3 mil­lion con­tract to a com­pa­ny al­leged­ly linked to the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), in­sist­ing it was nec­es­sary to ur­gent­ly ad­dress a wa­ter con­t­a­m­i­na­tion cri­sis af­fect­ing Point Fortin res­i­dents—and had noth­ing to do with the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

Gon­za­les was re­spond­ing to cur­rent Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Bar­ry Padarath, who ac­cused the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion of award­ing a “sole se­lect con­tract of $3.1 mil­lion” to a PNM cam­paign man­ag­er and sub-agent days be­fore the Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

How­ev­er, dur­ing an Op­po­si­tion news con­fer­ence yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les ar­rived with doc­u­ments he said were from WASA, claim­ing they proved the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) “in­tends to gov­ern with lies.”

He pro­duced a doc­u­ment con­tain­ing a “Sit­u­a­tion­al Analy­sis,” which stat­ed the 1,900 res­i­dents along Salazar Trace, Point Fortin, were ex­posed to a se­ri­ous pub­lic health and safe­ty risk be­cause the wa­ter sup­ply was deemed un­safe for hu­man con­sump­tion.

Gon­za­les said test­ing was con­duct­ed in Feb­ru­ary and in March, WASA man­agers rec­om­mend­ed Obzen Con­struc­tion Lim­it­ed to ex­e­cute the works.

“The man­agers of WASA rec­om­mend­ed that Obzen Con­struc­tion Lim­it­ed be se­lect­ed based on their abil­i­ty to mo­bilise. They went through their own emer­gency ten­der process and de­ter­mined that the con­trac­tor was cho­sen be­cause they could mo­bilise with­in the short­est pos­si­ble time, as all ma­jor con­trac­tors were al­ready en­gaged in con­tracts for the au­thor­i­ty and in­di­cat­ed they were un­able to meet the re­quired time­frame and ca­pa­bil­i­ties need­ed for this emer­gency job,” he ex­plained.

He ac­cused Padarath of try­ing to cre­ate the im­pres­sion that the con­tract was po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed due to the ap­proach­ing elec­tion.

“Had the min­is­ter read those doc­u­ments, he would re­alise that the gen­e­sis of this mat­ter had ab­solute­ly noth­ing to do with any Gen­er­al Elec­tion on April 28,” Gon­za­les said.

He al­so said the con­trac­tor has not yet been paid for the project.

Pressed by Guardian Me­dia on any per­son­al af­fil­i­a­tion with Obzen Con­struc­tion, Gon­za­les said even if the com­pa­ny was linked to the PNM, it had a right to align with a po­lit­i­cal par­ty.

“As we speak to­day, you will see a UNC cam­paign man­ag­er be­ing placed as a URP co­or­di­na­tor,” Gon­za­les said.

He ac­cused Padarath of push­ing the nar­ra­tive that if some­one is as­so­ci­at­ed with the PNM they should not be in­volved in le­git­i­mate gov­ern­ment con­tracts.

“You can’t point to any­thing that was in breach of the Pro­cure­ment Act. You can’t point to any cor­rup­tion what­so­ev­er. But sud­den­ly, some­thing is wrong sim­ply be­cause the per­son is a PNM sup­port­er,” he said.

He con­tin­ued: “That is ridicu­lous. And if we have to go through the Com­pa­nies Reg­istry, look at di­rec­tors, and ex­am­ine their as­so­ci­a­tion with any po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion—be it PNM or UNC—and then point to that as though it’s ev­i­dence of wrong­do­ing, then we’re head­ing down a very dan­ger­ous road.”

Gon­za­les said Obzen is ex­pect­ed to send a pre-ac­tion let­ter to Padarath soon.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day, Padarath said he has not re­ceived any com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the com­pa­ny.

Padarath said, “Did I say they were cor­rupt? I put the facts on the ta­ble. What is the ob­jec­tion to what I’ve said? Did he in­di­cate what part of what I said was not true?”