SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

Shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

Two days be­fore the 2025 Gen­er­al Elec­tion on April 28, work on the Pa­lo Seco Velo­drome abrupt­ly halt­ed, stalling a $40.6 mil­lion up­grade and leav­ing res­i­dents with an aban­doned site.

Four-and-a-half months lat­er, the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) is ex­plor­ing the op­tion to ter­mi­nate the con­tract award­ed to SAS Mar­ket­ing and Gen­er­al Con­trac­tors Ltd.

Ude­cott con­firmed this to Guardian Me­dia last week.

The sod for the project was turned on Ju­ly 28, 2023, by then prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, with work to be com­plet­ed in Jan­u­ary 2025. Ude­cott ex­e­cut­ed the project for Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd, its client.

Works in­clud­ed the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the ex­ist­ing ath­let­ic field, run­ning and cy­cling tracks, and ex­ist­ing park­ing fa­cil­i­ties.

The con­trac­tor al­so had to re­store the sports club­house and in­stall a perime­ter fence and light­ing, as well as con­struct a guard booth and new pavil­ion to ac­com­mo­date 1,000 spec­ta­tors and 500 ath­letes.

Ac­cord­ing to Ude­cott, the con­trac­tor stopped work on April 26, 2025, with the project ap­prox­i­mate­ly “58 per cent com­plet­ed”.

Ude­cott ad­mit­ted there were some is­sues with the cy­cling track and the in­ner field drainage and not­ed that “the con­trac­tor has been made aware, hav­ing re­ceived a No­tice to Cor­rect”.

Asked when work will re­sume on the mul­ti-mil­lion dol­lar project, Ude­cott stat­ed in an email that it has “writ­ten sev­er­al cor­re­spon­dences to the con­trac­tor in­struct­ing that work re­sume im­me­di­ate­ly. The con­trac­tor has still not re­sumed work, and there­fore, Ude­cott is ex­plor­ing its op­tions un­der the con­tract to ter­mi­nate the con­trac­tor”.

“On the com­ple­tion of the ter­mi­na­tion process, Ude­cott, in dis­cus­sion with the client, Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Lim­it­ed, will for­mu­late a strat­e­gy for com­ple­tion.”

Ude­cott said the con­trac­tor failed to meet the de­liv­ery date due to sev­er­al de­sign it­er­a­tions to en­sure “that the de­sign was code-com­pli­ant”, in­clud­ing “lack of pro­duc­tive progress, co­or­di­nat­ing is­sues, man­pow­er short­ages, and the weath­er”.

$7.3 mil­lion in vari­a­tions

Ude­cott list­ed five vari­a­tions to the com­pa­ny, to­talling an ap­proved cost of $7,283,912.57.

* The first vari­a­tion was list­ed as the North field drainage. “Due to an un­der­sized drainage sys­tem, up­grad­ing of the field and drainage is re­quired to as­sist in the mit­i­ga­tion of flood­ing in the area,” Ude­cott stat­ed. The cost was $3,719,363.31.

* Sec­ond­ly, mod­i­fi­ca­tions were made to the “ini­tial choice of seat­ing from Chi­nese to the Stare­na brand, which is used on oth­er sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties un­der­tak­en by Ude­cott.” Ude­cott stat­ed that the Stare­na brand is the top choice for sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties glob­al­ly. The cost was $454,126.76.

* Third­ly, due to the ad­vanced de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of the old club­house, which had ma­jor struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty is­sues, “the de­ci­sion was made to de­mol­ish and re­build the struc­ture”, Ude­cott said. The cost was $2,240,235.

* Fourth­ly, as work pro­gressed, it was ob­served that flat por­tions of the cy­cling track on the east and west­ern sec­tions be­gan to ap­pear un­du­lat­ing.

“Fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions re­vealed that the drainage be­neath the track was clogged and var­i­ous sec­tions col­lapsed due to an ap­par­ent lack of main­te­nance over the years, caus­ing the sub­sur­face of the track to lose its struc­tur­al in­tegri­ty. Hence, vari­a­tion was re­quired to per­mit the to­tal de­mo­li­tion and re­con­struc­tion of the spe­cif­ic sides of the tracks.” The cost was $800,437.50.

* Last­ly, a con­sul­tant was man­dat­ed to re­view po­ten­tial flood­ing at the project’s lo­ca­tion, re­view the con­trac­tor’s cur­rent de­sign and pro­pose any ad­di­tion­al re­quire­ments to as­sist with al­le­vi­at­ing flood­ing. The cost was $69,750.

Ude­cott as­sured that “there is no mat­ter be­fore the court on this project” and “no pay­ments are owed to the con­trac­tor”.

Ude­cott stat­ed that the con­trac­tor ver­bal­ly in­di­cat­ed that there was theft on the site.

“How­ev­er, Ude­cott is yet to re­ceive any of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence from the con­trac­tor.”

SAS Mar­ket­ing and Gen­er­al Con­trac­tors Ltd de­clined to com­ment to Guardian Me­dia.

BOX

Com­mu­ni­ty hopes dashed

When the Pa­lo Seco com­mu­ni­ty heard that $40.6 mil­lion would be spent to re­fur­bish the run-down Pa­lo Seco Velo­drome, res­i­dent Shar­lene Blades was ex­cit­ed.

Re­sid­ing op­po­site the velo­drome, Blades re­mem­bered watch­ing the sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny from her ve­ran­dah, stat­ing that Pa­lo Seco was fi­nal­ly get­ting a sport­ing fa­cil­i­ty that it de­served.

Blades, along with the res­i­dents, was look­ing for­ward to the velo­drome be­ing com­mis­sioned to res­ur­rect sport­ing com­pe­ti­tions, in­clud­ing the South­ern Games.

“Since ah small, I hear­ing we get­ting a new velo­drone. I was re­al­ly look­ing for­ward to this sport­ing fa­cil­i­ty ... now I’m feel­ing so dis­ap­point­ed,” Blades con­fessed.

“I’m not feel­ing good at all be­cause it’s our youth … it’s our school chil­dren, you know, look­ing for­ward to this. This should have nev­er hap­pened, not a project of this mag­ni­tude.”

Blades said her heart sank when work on the project came to a grind­ing halt two days be­fore the elec­tion.

She al­so raised an is­sue with the site not be­ing prop­er­ly se­cured by the con­trac­tor.

“No­body not here, if you don’t have se­cu­ri­ty, what go hap­pen? Every­thing would be tak­en away from here; it would be van­dalised and de­mol­ished.”

Not far away, the own­er of a small busi­ness, who asked not to be named, said the project be­came the com­mu­ni­ty’s ray of hope.

“When Petrotrin shut down op­er­a­tions of its small re­fin­ery in San­ta Flo­ra in 2018, many peo­ple be­came un­em­ployed,” she said.

The com­mu­ni­ty’s un­em­ploy­ment rate fur­ther in­creased with Cepep work­ers be­ing sent home in Ju­ly.

“The peo­ple in Pa­lo Seco have been re­al­ly catch­ing their ne­nen for work, so they saw the velo­drome as a means of sur­vival. It gave them some hope.”

But two of the project’s for­mer work­ers com­plained that peo­ple liv­ing out­side of the com­mu­ni­ty were giv­en jobs ahead of Pa­lo Seco res­i­dents.

This did not sit well with the vil­lagers.

“Miss, I ain’t go lie, plen­ty Pa­lo Seco peo­ple made an up­roar to get work,” the taller of the two for­mer work­ers ad­mit­ted. I was one of them. I get on re­al bad.”

He was hired as a ma­son, the oth­er as a labour­er. Both men claimed they were over­worked and un­der­paid.

“Peo­ple were work­ing un­der op­pres­sion,” he said, voic­ing his com­plaint.

In ad­di­tion, they were not paid on time.

“That was an is­sue by it­self. I don’t even want to talk about that be­cause I does get vex,” an­oth­er for­mer work­er added.

They fur­ther com­plained that the few res­i­dents who se­cured jobs were in­tim­i­dat­ed by the out­siders.

“Peo­ple start­ed to get scared and leave. I val­ued my life, so I left,” said one of the men who re­fused to give his name for fear of be­ing tar­get­ed.

When the project stopped, he said, work­ers who were not paid, in­clud­ing a few job­less peo­ple, start­ed to re­move items from the job­site.

“They break open a con­tain­er and stole a fridge, an air con­di­tion­ing unit, PVC pipelines, and lengths of steel.”

A por­tion of the gal­vanised fenc­ing was al­so stolen, which was lat­er used to build a pig pen.

“If peo­ple have no work, they will steal,” he point­ed out.

Re­gard­less of which gov­ern­ment is in pow­er, he said, the project should be com­plet­ed.

“We wait­ing to see what Aun­ty Kam­la will do for we. Yel­low is the code,” he said.

There was no se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer in sight when Guardian Me­dia vis­it­ed the job­site on Wednes­day.

A glass pan­el in the door of one of the freight con­tain­ers on the com­pound had been smashed.

The site of­fice’s door was al­so se­cured with a weld­ed length of steel.

Post­ed out­side the job­site was a Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um Com­pa­ny Ltd sign ad­vis­ing peo­ple to call their hot­line num­ber if they have in­for­ma­tion re­gard­ing crime in their field, as­sur­ing them that their iden­ti­ty would be pro­tect­ed.

A tour of the fa­cil­i­ty showed the roof and seats in the pavil­ion still need­ed to be in­stalled.

The guard booth and an ad­ja­cent build­ing were in­com­plete, while a large pool of wa­ter had set­tled on one side of the grassy field.